By Rusty Nixon Correspondent
ARGOS — With the current economy putting a bite on nearly everything, last week’s auction at the county fair seems to have gotten off with just a little nip.
While the dollar amount for animals sold was down for this year’s fair — still listed at more than $209,730 —  Brent Markley, the Auction Committee chairman, feels that the change could be from any number of reasons.

“The dollar amount was down from the previous year but so was the total number of animals sold,” said Markley. “I can’t say that it didn’t have anything to do with the economy, but we see some trends of ups and downs from year to year. Some years there are just more numbers than others.
“I’ve seen some numbers for other fairs around the state and some of them were down a lot further than us; some of them were actually higher than a year ago. It’s really tough to come up with any one reason why.”
Markley says that there could be a number of reasons for the slight drop in sales numbers.
“There are lots of variables to it,” said Markley. “Sometimes you have more new members than other years. The number of 10-year members who move on have something to do with it. It is possible that maybe because of the economy that instead of bringing sheep, pigs and beef, a family decided to bring just two out of the three this year. As a whole we still had great community support.”
Markley also points to another simple fact — dollar amounts for the auction are not the reason for 4-H.
“The point of 4-H is to teach youth the skills to be successful in life and society and to be a positive influence in their community,” said Markley. “Our kids did that. I think they all did a really great job on their projects and the community is always very supportive of that.”
Markley’s job isn’t quite done yet. His committee will be compiling final numbers and then sitting down as they do each year to assess the auction and brainstorm.
“We always do a review and then sit down and talk about everything,” said Markley. “We talk about what went well and changes we might want to make to make next year’s auction better. That’s also an opportunity for everybody involved with the auction to give their input on what they think might make it better.
“Really this year everything went according to plan. I think it was a very successful year.”