Will Barker & Co

Will Barker & Co are Lincolnshire land agents and auctioneers, set up in 2021 when the agricultural department demerged from the estate agency Pygott & Crone. The auction calendar follows the farming year rather than a commercial schedule: retirement dispersals in September, the Farmers' Autumn Machinery Auction in October, an online-only winter sale in January, and the Spring Machinery Sale in March.

What you can buy

• Farm machinery — tractors, implements and trailed equipment from retirement dispersals and collective sales.
• Complete farm dispersals, sold on the farm itself.
• Rural property and land — grassland, arable, storage buildings, period cottages.

How the bidding works

Most sales are physical events at a named location — Park Farm at Ewerby for a dispersal, Bicker Bar near Boston for the collective sales — with entry forms published in advance for sellers. The winter auction is online only. An auction newsletter carries the entries as they come in, which for farm machinery is how buyers find out what is actually in a sale.

What to check before you bid

Retirement dispersals sell one farm's working kit in one day, so condition varies with how that farm was run rather than with a grading system — viewing on the morning is the norm and it matters. Machinery sold at a farm sale usually has to leave promptly. For the property side, the sale method differs from the machinery auctions; check whether a lot is auction or private treaty.