In 1959, he started a livestock auction in a chicken coop; 67 years later, his daughters run it

Since her father died in 2002, Lisa Scirpo has been working to persuade farmers and dealers that the Middlesex Livestock Auction will continue as the only sale barn in Connecticut. Without it, Scirpo said farmers who want to bring animals to auction would have to travel to Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. But now, farmers in those states come to Middlefield.Scirpo had grown up on the farm watching the animals and the buyers go buy and her father helmed the process. After his death, she went farm to farm with notices, telling people that she could take over. While she initially faced scepticism from farmers, over the past few decades she has proved that she can keep Middlesex Livestock Auction going.Her father, Sebastian Scirpo built much of the place as it is today. The old bleachers, the sale ring where the animals are presented, the chute they go through after the sale and the scale on which they are weighed. “Every cement block you see here, my father built,” she said to CT Insider.A father's dreamSebastian started the auction in 1959. He began in a rented chicken coop on Little Lane and made $7 on his first commission. He had grown up near his grandmother's farm and loved animals...