When I was a little kid, I was fascinated by miniature stuff. Dolls-house furniture, dolls clothes, lilliputian books. My favourite was a set of miniature groceries that my cousin had - teeny boxes of cereal, little plastic loaves of bread, itty-bitty tins of spam. I coveted the tiny groceries fiercely, and would insist on playing with them every time I visited.
Just imagine then, my longing, had I known that as well as stocking and restocking the (miniature) shelves of my imaginary (miniature) supermarket, I could have been making imaginary (miniature) hay as well!*
Above are, and I quote, the toys that "heralded a new era in Britains' miniature hay-making operations". We're not just dealing with a few pieces of plastic and metal - it's a national operation. Miniature hay making is serious business. (Actually, the name of manufacturer is Britains. Hence the apostrophe placement in the quote. I prefer to ignore this fact, and imagine the entire British Isles in the 1960s dedicating itself to miniature hay making.)
Now, the astute reader will realise that the bales (yes, the miniature hay makers came with their own miniature hay bales. My 6 year old self is green with envy.) in the Bamfords BL58 haymaker (2 & 2A above) are transported through the model by way of a driven rubber band. Clearly Britains were a bit behind the eight ball on this one, but luckily they released a new teeny hay maker in 1978 with a new system.
Introducing the New Holland 376! I am reliably informed by Classic Tractor that in this model "two driven plastic reciprocating strips in the bale chamber 'walked' the bales out of the baler as it was being pulled along the floor."
But even the New Holland had its design flaws (hard to believe, I know): "Although the sledge didn't arrange the bales into a flat-eight formation, like the real machines, Britains did provide a front-loader with a flat-eight grab attachment to move them. There was a still an element of manual handling before the grab attachment could pick up the bales..."
Dreadful, isn't it, when you need to manually handle your little plastic bales of hay before the grab attachment can pick them up?
*The real trick is finding the miniature horses to eat all your miniature hay.
Ha, clearly you've never met a Breyer horse fan!
ReplyDeleteAnd by that Christy (Sake's Christy?) means me.
ReplyDeleteBut really those little bails of hay aren't nearly as bad as moving it in real life, which yes does usually require manual labor at at least two points, arranging them on the wagon and in the barn, sometimes more if you don't have the equipment.
Breyerchic