Lisa Scirpo has been steering the Middlesex Livestock Auction in Middlefield since her father Sebastian’s death in 2002. She told CT Insider that without the barn, farmers would have to drive across state lines to Massachusetts or Pennsylvania.
Sebastian Scirpo launched the auction in 1959 out of a rented chicken coop on Little Lane, taking a modest $7 commission. In 1970 the family bought the Cherry Hill Road property and built the barn brick by brick. “Every cement block you see here, my father built,” Lisa recalled to CT Insider.
After a corn‑chopper accident left him with amputable legs, doctors warned of an amputation, but a surgeon offered to sew them back together. Sebastian survived, walking in a walker and later a cane. Another tragedy came on February 11, his birthday, when sister Lana slipped off a Super‑M tractor and lost an arm. Lisa said she and Lana now run the auction together.
The auction’s paperwork was once handwritten; Kathleen Scirpo printed checks and handled money by hand. Lisa incorporated computers a few years ago to streamline the process. The day after the installation, her aunt Barbara, who had been helping, passed away peacefully.
The auction is now the only sale barn left in Connecticut, a state that had 5,058 farms in 2022 and $704 million in agricultural production. State Agriculture Commissioner Bryan P. Hurlburt said the state’s investments in animal health and local processing aim to keep such facilities thriving.
Farmers from neighboring states now come to Middlefield, avoiding the need to travel to Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. The auction’s survival secures local farmers’ livelihoods and keeps the county’s livestock market alive for the next decade.