CARLYLE - Donna and Dellan Mohrbutter are well-known residents of southeast Saskatchewan and own and operate Key M Auction Services.
The Mohrbutters, who reside on a farm 30 kilometres southeast of Carlyle, have been married for 52 years and have three children and eight grandchildren. For 40 years, they raised purebred Charolais cattle and had a herd of 175.
In the fall of 1999, they attended Agribition in Regina and Mohrbutter picked up a pamphlet about how to become an auctioneer. He decided to give it a go and naturally he aced the two-week course. A few months later, they were up and running.
Their first auction was conducted in April 2000 at their home farm. It was a consignment sale that had over 400 people in attendance. There was 60 guest consignors and the sale ended at 8 p.m. The Alida 4-H Beef Club served the lunch that Saturday.
The Mohrbutters specialize in smaller farm auctions as well as household, antique and estate sales. Wife Donna is the bookkeeper, and they would like to recognize many of their staff that has helped them over the years including Murray Rossow, Eleanor Harrison, Marge Garnier, John Thomas, Denis Seymour, Stan and Connie Thiessen, John Birch, Maurice Quenelle, Linda Akins and others.
Local organizations are asked to serve the food and drink and they in turn receive 100 per cent of the proceeds.
Mohrbutter is now 76 years old and still prefers live auctions. Key M has never conducted an online auction and have no desire to do so. They do offer proxy and phone bids for those who aren’t able to attend, and conduct an average of 25 auctions per year.
They have donated their time and talent to many local organizations over the past two decades, including churches, wildlife auctions, curling calcuttas, and other charities. Said Dellan, “With our farm being smack-dab in the middle of Carlyle, Wauchope, Alida, Redvers and Manor, we know a lot of people and do a lot of the household auctions. They are very few of us left that do them.”
Added Donna, “It was never our intention to get rich when we started the auction business and this has proved to be true. However, we have helped many folks out when they’ve had to move and have made lots of friends along the way. We look forward to seeing them at sales.”
The Mohrbutters have shared a lot of laughs over the years and have a lot of fond memories. Every year, they compress their pictures and sale bills into an annual photograph scrapbook. They are also very active participants on Facebook.
And they have strong memories of their auctioneering careers.
“I have a good friend, let’s call him D, that just loved going to auctions. Unfortunately for he and his wife, we’ll call her Mrs. D, he always felt obliged to buy something,” said Dellan. “Although D & D already owned two pianos, he brought one home and stored it covered in his garage. The next day, Mrs D. asked him, did you buy anything at the auction yesterday? He said no, not really. Later that day, she caught him playing in the garage and the fur was flying.”
Added Donna, “Back in the early days, Dellan used to stand halfway in front of a long table consisting of boxes of household wares. At one of his sales, a regular female bidder kept tugging at his pants whenever she wanted to bid instead of raising her bidding card. She was an aggressive bidder and each time gave him a rather terse tug. At the next auction, I noticed my husband proudly sporting new suspenders!”
Although they are now entering their twilight years, the Mohrbutters don’t plan on retiring for a while. Concluded Dellan, “It’s been difficult to hold live auction sales the past two years because of COVID issues. When the restrictions lift, hopefully Key M Auctions will see an increase in people wanting live auction sales.”
For more agriculture stories from southeast Saskatchewan, check out the On The Farm special publication.
