For many children, a toy farm is as close as they come to living in or near the countryside. I was lucky enough to move to the coastal edge of Exmoor several years ago and feel as though I have found my spiritual home, having both the sea and the moor as my neighbours. Sometimes we look out of the front of our house to check sea conditions in the morning and on other days we look out of the back windows to the hills of Exmoor, generally to see how the sheep in the field above are doing.
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This morning I opened the curtains in our back bedroom to reveal a beautiful day. Gentle mist hugged the tops of the hills, but the morning sun was banishing the haze before my eyes. We are on lamb watch at the moment and in many ways this is my favourite time of year as the dark and cold of winter retreat, temperatures rise and the sun begins to warm our chilly bones. More than anything else, I think of lambs as the sign of spring and a wonderful reason to be cheerful.
Alas the lambs haven’t arrived yet, but what I did witness made me smile nonetheless. The local farmer was whizzing through the field at the top of the hill on his quad bike, followed by around one hundred sheep that were sprinting – yes sprinting! – to keep up. If you have never seen sheep moving in a line at speed, you’ve missed out on a very amusing sight. The reason for mass sprint was clearly the bag of feed that was being emptied from the back of the quad bike. It was like watching a modern update of the Pied Piper of Hamlyn. Or even Lamblyn. It’s an odd thing to see – a line of sheep dissecting a lush green field – but see it I did and it was a great way to start the day.
I remember my play farm with great fondness. A wooden base board painted green with a couple of outbuildings, some plastic mini fencing and mini cows, sheep, pigs and hens. There was even a duck pond painted on the base. In that respect, farm toys have not really changed. Of course, at WoodenToyShop our wooden farm toys do indeed have outbuildings, farm houses, hay lofts, stables, dry stone walls and wooden fencing. There are ponds and pig sties and our wooden farm animals include cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, horses and sheepdogs. The Melissa and Doug Fold and Go Barn even comes with a turkey! And if your children get bored of everyday farm animals, we can offer some more exotic specimens with the Le Toy Van Savannah and Zambezi wild animals. I suppose you could put the crocodile in the duck pond, but don’t blame me if chaos ensues!
No farm toy is complete without a tractor or two. My favourite is the Plan Toys Tractor and Trailer with Driver, although Bertie’s Tractor comes a close second and whenever we visit a farm park there is always a new toy tractor to park in the barn. Unfortunately, we haven’t found a mini wooden quad bike to help recreate this morning’s shenanigans!
