Recent Rural Property Purchases

I thought I'd better update you on the status of some of my old posts. Since some of you have inquired, I have indeed, bought the farm. It came in last week (was it last week?) and I couldn't be more pleased. It was one of those great eBay snares and here are my gloat pics. Note the fabulous condition of the lithos on the sides of the barn, silo and tractor, the presence of ears on the animals, and most glorious of all -- floor boards on masonite instead of plain green plastic. This is the farm of my childhood and not one of the later models. Oh, yeah, Nora likes it too.

Here's the whole farm, note that the orange pen and it's creatures do not belong to this farm set, but they came with the e-bay listing, along with that cute, wooden(!) truck up front and the boat in the back by the silo, which was not part of the original farm set, but was part of the houseboat set that I also had and thankfully my parents saved - this boat is going to their house to join the bigger houseboat, yellow lounge chairs, and red table set with lobster dinner that survives.
Close up of the farm animals and the fabulous inside of the barn. This picture is not detailed enough for you to see that the fence pieces have a rough-hewn texture - detail completely lacking from today's FP toys. Also missing from this picture (and modern FP farms) but not from my set is the happy sound of "moooooooo" that happens when you open or close the door (or when you spend several minutes triggering the mechanism: moooo, moooo, mmooooooooooooooo). Note the Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Symbol on the side of the barn in the pic below.

Nor do the modern sets have nearly the number of figures/pieces. While the modern figures are more detailed, they are perhaps too specific. Like many modern toys they eliminate the use of imagination by filling in too many of the blanks for us. Or maybe I'm just too blinded by my nostalgia for me to warm up to them. Here's the modern FP person and the vintage for your comparison:

In other news, I finally installed the Dutch Kinder on my mom's old pantry that she refurbished for Nora. This project went incredibly well. I fully expected the decals to crumble given their age and for me to have a royal fit. But they performed as their 50 + year old descriptions claimed and slid off their paper backing with water and adhered to the doors as if they were brand new. Actually, given the state of recently manufactured things, probably better than brand new. My lesson from these two experiences - go vintage. Better quality, more detail, and it keeps stuff out of landfills.


This is my favorite decal, sorry it's so blurry!:

Here's Nora and Grammy having a tea party in front of the pantry, by the way that cute tea set is from Lillian Vernon Kids and is NOT vintage, but it is perfect for little hands with it's soft fabric construction although it is perhaps a bit pink. Despite the horrors of the regular Lillian Vernon catalog, the Kids catalog has some neat stuff (as well as too much Disney Princess crap):