Greenville, Ohio – Ted Finnarn, local Attorney and Farmer, is leaving the Darke County 4-H Fair Livestock Committee after serving for 48 years.
Finnarn noted, “I started on the Committee in 1976, fresh out of Law School, when me and wife Holly came back to Darke County to live on our family farm. At that time, I was Chairman of the Extension Advisory Committee, and the 4-H Livestock sales were run out of the Extension Office. I first worked with Extension Agent John Vermilya and then Dennis Baker and others”. Finnarn related “And at that time there were no computers, no laptops, no cell phones, and the sales were all done on paper. Can you imagine!”
He said that he was proud to serve on the Committee with his late father Ted Finnarn Sr., for quite a few years before he passed. “I helped (along with my father, Junior Schultz, Lowell Marshall and Larry Miller) to develop the “Multiple Buyer Sheet”, which relieved the buyers of the onerous procedure of “waving” their card numbers around to identify themselves on joint purchases”. He continued, “At one time I bought for over 20 different buyers at the sales, including the Darke County Commissioners, County Office holders, Chamber of Commerce, Darke County Realtors, Schultz Motors (before Junior himself started coming to the Fair), Darke County Board of Realtors, Farmers Union, NFO, SISCO, Crop Mate, Continental Grain, Fair Concessions, and many others businesses and individuals”.
There will no longer be Livestock sales of individual species at the Fair, since they have gone the way of digital computerization and will now all be done on-line. There will be a “Sale of Champions” only, on Wednesday of the Fair. Finnarn lamented, “ I will miss the camaraderie we shared among all the buyers, seeing them each year and catching up on all their families activities. And I of course, I will miss the 4-H kids and their parents and grandparents, some of which I had been buying for three generations now”. Finnarn closed by saying, “Now I will have more time to relax at the Fair. Stop in and see me and sign up for a free ham or turkey at the Farmers Union booth in the Coliseum and we can chat awhile about agriculture and the weather”.