Kiddicraft Brick Farm – Large Tractor with Trailer Building Set KC1110

Kiddicraft's Large Tractor with Trailer is built from 211 pieces — a tractor with working wheels, a spacious attachable trailer for harvest, straw and hay, and two KIDDIZ figures. Without the trailer it fits through the barn entrance of set KC1108. Age 5+.

The tractor replaced the horse in about one generation

It is easy to assume farm mechanisation was gradual. In Germany it was not — it happened inside twenty years, and there are people alive who saw both ends of it.

In 1950 West German agriculture still ran substantially on horses; several hundred thousand worked the land, and a medium-sized farm might own two. There were relatively few tractors, and most farms did not have one.

By the early 1970s the working horse had essentially vanished and tractors numbered well over a million. A single machine replaced the animals, the feed they ate, the land that grew the feed, and much of the labour that handled both.

The knock-on effects were enormous. A horse needs roughly a fifth of a farm's land to feed itself; a tractor needs a tank of diesel, and that fifth became productive. It is one of the largest single gains in agricultural output in European history, and it was accomplished without a single new hectare.

What it also did was end an entire body of knowledge — how to work a horse, harness it, judge it, keep it sound. Within one generation that was gone from farms where it had been essential for a thousand years.

Built to fit the barn

Without its trailer the tractor drives through the entrance of set KC1108, the Farm Stable. A vehicle sized to a building is worth more in play than either is separately.

In the Brick Farm range

Set KC1109 is the small tractor with trailer and KC1113 the red tractor with roller and mower.

Specifications

Pieces: 211 · Figures: 2 KIDDIZ · Tractor with attachable trailer, fits the KC1108 barn entrance · Series: Kiddicraft Brick Farm · Age: 5+