Wrenching Tales by Cindy Ladage 

 

One of the highlights of the National Farm Toy Show is the farm layouts, and encouraging the younger generation to be part of this hobby. The show takes place the first full weekend in November in Dyersville, Iowa.

It is located at the National Farm Toy Museum and Beckman High School, with the farm layouts on display at Beckman, a Catholic school that pulls out all the stops for this huge annual event.

This year the first-place winners for the youth farm layout were three young men with a family history in them. In 1997 their dad, Brad Mortimer, won first place in the youth layout, and he has had a dozen displays as an adult.

Mortimer Brothers’ farm was a combination of the vision of Clayton, 9, Colton, 6, and Carter, 5. Originally each young man planned to have his own display, but when room was an issue, they combined their ideas and came up with one.

“They had to compromise,” their Mom, Jaclyn, explained.

Mortimer Brothers’ layout consisted of a farmstead with a farmhouse built years ago by Brad. The house was based on that of a family friend. No farmstead is complete without fieldwork, and the Mortimers created fields representing a busy corn and bean harvest.

The farm also had a grain operation and corral for a herd of horses. The horses were the idea of Carter, who likes to ride his aunt’s horse, Ugly. Colton was in charge of the machine shed/shop, the homestead and the cornfield, but his focus was on the machinery. His favorite is Case, which makes sense because their dad works at a Case dealership and their grandparents’ farm is operated with Case equipment.

Clayton was responsible for the bean field and he and Carter were in charge of the house. The display had much detail and hard work. But while all that was challenging, Colton said the most difficult part of the display was “setting up and putting everything in the right spot.”

The second-place winner, Iain Martin, was a first-time contestant. “This was my first farm show and I was happily surprised,” he said of his big win.

A seventh-grader, he hails from Edina, Minn. He took stories from his grandpa and great-grandpa and wove those memories into a winning farm layout. “I was always into dairy, so I displayed cows,” he said.

Bringing memories to life, he built a barn as the center of his farmstead. “I resurrected a 1922 barn. I customized and painted the barn.” Cows, with stanchions, fencing and feed, completed the barn scene. The cattle were mixed breeds just like his grandfather had, mostly Holsteins with six Guernsey cows mixed in “for better quality.”

Iain even added in a hog lot and placed a horse among the cattle, reflecting farms of yesteryear where animals of all types were the mainstay: “Great-Grandpa always had a horse in with the cows,” he said.

The pigs in the lot were Hampshires. “My mom’s dad, Grandpa was around Hampshire pigs. His brother even rode a pig.”

One special piece of equipment was a pickup that came from the Pennsylvania Farm Show. Attached to the pickup was a hand-carved wooden trailer. “The truck was modeled after my grandpa’s, my mom’s dad,” Iain said.

The homestead on this farm was an Ertl house that Iain painted and landscaped around. The scene shows a John Deere tractor with a loader and hay being cut, then formed into round bales.

“My mom’s dad had an A John Deere and hay rake like this. I used an Allis Chalmers roto-baler for something different. It took a while to come up with the windrows.”

Other farming scenes of ground being worked and a winter wheat field added to the layout scene. Putting this display together took much time and effort. Iain began his labor of love Christmas 2013.

These 2014 youth layouts were a lot of fun and creative – the future of the hobby is in good hands!

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication.