MASONVILLE, Iowa — Lavern Kelchen stood in the back of a church hall in jeans and a buffalo-check shirt, tapped his left index finger on his leg and placed the winning bid on a 156-acre farm here in eastern Iowa. It marked the seventh auction he had attended in the last five years and, with a bid of $9,000 an acre, his first win.

“I’m just getting a really good start,” said Mr. Kelchen, 51, who farms 2,400 acres near Edgewood, Iowa. “I plan to go as long as I possibly can.”

For farmers like Mr. Kelchen, whose work is a deep-seated lifestyle, retirement seems more like a sentence than a prize. “The first two days I’d probably be all right,” he said. “But after that, I’d be going haywire.”

Mark Francois, 64, a farmer who also bid on the farm, echoed that sentiment. “I can only play so much golf,” he said, seated beside his son. “I don’t look forward to retirement. I look forward to doing fieldwork.”