COW SALE ENDS VERMONT SISTERS' DAIRY QUEEN RULE.

Byline: Sara Rimer The New York Times

New York had the Sotheby's auction of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' pearls and other personal belongings last month. Vermont had its equivalent Monday in Mud City, at the auction of the Lepine sisters' 129 prized Jersey cows.

If Onassis was an icon of New York society, the Lepine sisters - Gertrude, 68, Jeannette, 66, and Therese, 71 - are the doyennes of rural northern Vermont.

The sisters, and the Jersey cows they have been milking, feeding and cleaning up after for more than four decades, are what many Vermonters regard as the real Vermont - not the tourist version with Ben & Jerry's ice cream, $150-a-night country inns and T-shirts with Holstein cows painted by the artist Woody Jackson.

``They've got the best herd in the state,'' said Howard Morse, a 79-year-old milk salesman, who has known the Lepine sisters since they were small. ``Everyone knows that.'' His voice displayed awe. A lot of men around here sound awed when they talk about the Lepine sisters, and their cows.

One of the auctioneers, Neal Smith, told the sisters it was an honor for him to sell their cows. Farmers from all over the state drove up to the sisters' farm in Mud City, a bend in the road north of Stowe, for the privilege of bidding on one of their cows, while others phoned in bids from Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho, Wisconsin and New York.

Morse joined the standing-room-only crowd under the big red-and-white tent out of respect for the Lepine sisters and because it seemed as if it was the end of an era.

One neighbor sent a basket of marigolds and daisies, with a note, ``We won't call it retirement.'' Gert, as the middle sister is known to all, hung the basket on the rail around the auction pen. Several of the cows stopped to sniff the flowers as they took their turn through the sawdust.

The sisters are not selling the land where they grew up and where their father farmed before them, and they plan to stay right where they are, surrounded by the Green Mountains.

But Tuesday's auction meant that Vermont will have one less dairy farm. When Gert decided she hated being a schoolteacher and returned to the farm in 1952 - Jeannette and Therese followed later - the state had more than 11,000 dairy farms. Today there are fewer than 1,200.

Gert recalled the day she realized, in the midst of teaching a class, that she would rather be milking cows. ``I looked out the window and I said to myself, `I'm out of here.' I wanted to be where I could sing when I wanted to and swear when I wanted to.''

She lost $13,000 last year, she said. ``Milk isn't selling. People don't drink milk anymore.''

But Gert said that she was never in it for the money and that the real reason they are selling is Jeannette's bad knee. Jeannette, who used to be a Pan Am stewardess, took a bad fall while she was skiing in Austria about 40 years ago. She had a knee operation in December, and she was hobbling around the barn Tuesday, feeding the cows and toting milk pails. But she has not been able to help the way she used to.

With Therese in failing health, that left Gert with more work than she could handle. ``You can't milk cows forever,'' Gert said.

Around here, even the sisters' hands are famous. ``Just look at their hands,'' Morse said. ``They're rough and gnarled. That's manual labor that caused that.''

Gert, a wiry woman in blue jeans, laughed, and held out her bruised left hand. ``Sparkle stepped on it,'' she said. Sparkle is one of her cows.

Gert knew the name of each cow. ``Here's Typhoon,'' she said, petting the cows that had not yet been loaded onto trailers. ``And here's Lizzie. Mighty Mite. Lynette. Goldie. Awake.''

Then she came to Veronica, the star of the auction. ``She went for $5,000,'' Gert said. ``She's heading off to Utah. She comes from a great family.'' A woman who is starting a dairy farm in Utah bought Veronica.