Tag Archives: Farm

A complicated combine combination

A while ago I wrote that I feel that my Lego models keep getting more complicated due to new parts and new techniques, while building something small and simple can be a lot more fun. The flip side is that those parts and techniques allow building things I could not have built years ago. Case in point: my new combine harvester transport. For years I mainly built larger-scale models, in part because I struggled to build a recognizable make and model of the vehicle at a scale suitable for Lego minifigures.

Despite new parts, it still is not particularly easy. This is one of the reasons why even Lego’s own designers resort to using stickers for the cars in the Speed Champions range, for instance. And those are pretty complicated, certainly for sets. Furthermore, their scale really stretches the definition of what is suitable for minifigures. Of course, I could have built a truck carrying a combine years ago. It would have looked like a generic European truck, though, while this model is recognizably a Dutch DAF truck, thanks to parts such as brackets. Obviously, I did use some stickers, but only for the company livery. What kept building this fun and relaxing, despite its complexity, was looking at it as a combination of smaller projects.
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The age old chicken or the egg discussion. Why choose?

Chickens might be my favourite animals ever. They have so much personality. You can see that quite clearly in Rickard Stensby’s latest chicken related creation. Using round 2×2 and/or 3×3 plates for the feathers is rather ingenious. I’ve been staring at this creation for a couple of days and I just can’t figure out how he managed to construct this creation. So far my guess is that there are a lot of minifigure robot/skeleton arms used to attach some of the plates to an inner structure. I also guess that some plates are just held on by friction of other actual connected plates. But I might be mistaken. Maybe you can help and take a wild guess in the comments. If you’ll excuse me now I have to convince my partner that we need some free range chickens for our garden.

The hen and the egg

Japanese farmers in a bamboo forest

This creation by Ids de Jong exudes a sense of calm and quiet even though the creation represents a bunch of Japanese farmers that are about to put in a good day’s work. Ids used the candle piece in dark tan and green to represent bamboo. The parts haven’t been fully pushed together to mimic the structure of bamboo better. It is nice to see the Raya hat alongside the two types of conical hats that already were in production.

Japanese farmers

If a Deere dumps in the woods

I don’t know why but I’m way into agricultural equipment. But seriously, I don’t know why. I didn’t grow up on a farm, most of my life has been spent in cities or suburbs so I have no farming background to speak of. Perhaps it’s the exotic-ness of farming that really plows my harvest. So you can imagine, I was pretty thrilled to see this LEGO John Deere tractor and Joskin tipping trailer built by Damian Z. The model is not overly large but it’s a solid construct and well detailed for its size. I can just smell the diesel fumes now. Or is that manure? This city slicker doesn’t seem to know one from another! Still, I get a kick out of this stuff. Check out our farming archives to see what I mean. While you’re at it, take a gander at our other John Deere builds including a twelve-year-old entry by yours truly.

JohnDeere&Joskin.05

New LEGO City 2022 summer sets explore farming and retail [News]

According to the product images revealed by German toy-retailer JB Speilwaren, this summer LEGO City is revisiting local farms — and it’s all about fresh and healthy produce. Four new sets ranging from a tiny one to a solid city building, re-introduce farming with lots of new animal figures. There is a bunch of highlights, with one being a full-size grocery store.

60344 Chicken Coop | 101 pieces | EUR 9.99

60345 Vegetable Delivery Truck | 310 pieces | EUR 29.99

60346 Farm with Animals | 210 pieces | EUR 49.99

60347 Supermarket | 404 pieces | EUR 59.99

This cow doesn’t fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain

It’s a tribute to the enduring power of certain images that I cannot hear the word “cowbell” without thinking of Blue Öyster Cult and fevers. And the LEGO minifgure torso looks remarkably like a cowbell, if one ignores the holes where the arms should go; so when I faced the challenge of coming up with creative uses for the part, I just had to build a cow with a cowbell around her neck. The whole time I was building it, I had to resist the idea of scrapping the build and trying to craft a hairy Will Ferrell holding the cowbell instead, and “The Reaper” was playing on repeat in my head. Ever try to build LEGO while dancing around playing air cowbell? It ain’t easy. I snuck in another torso in the barn, and added some of my dad’s old bushes and trees around it for some microscale detail in the background. LEGO is truly a multi-generational toy!

I've got a fever

While you’re feeling rustic, here are some more LEGO builds of barns and LEGO farms. And don’t forget to check out the Iron Forge, and even get a few entries in yourself!

She thinks my tractor is...

Big? Powerful? Full of dirt? Whatever she thinks about, what matters is that it gets the job done. Here in Idaho, where I’m from, John Deere tractors like this LEGO build from Jonathan Elliot are essential to making sure the rest of North America has enough french fries to go around.
John Deere Tractor

It’s incredible how much detail is packed into so few bricks. I like the flashing lights on top, essential when using county roads to get from field to field. The variation in tire size is a good touch. Even here in this tiny build, they still look huge! I also appreciate Jonathan’s use of black pieces to make it seem like there’s a lot of metal framing exposed, just like real tractors. Everything in this creation is spot on.

The LEGO harvester to rule all harvesters

Holy guacamole, Batman, this machinery puts Scarecrow’s to shame! Corn cobs everywhere are shaking in their husks!

Well, this giant LEGO harvester built by Michał “Eric Trax” Skorupka actually has nothing to do with the infamous Gotham criminal, but it sure is impressive. With all the details of the real-life Krone BigX 770, the specs are incredible. With its perfect body-shaping and lack of dirt, it may even look better than the real thing. But it’s not just how it looks on the outside.

Even if you know absolutely nothing about farming equipment, you can appreciate the effort that went into making it move. Inside every expert-level LEGO Technic vehicle is a complex system of motors and gearing that is sure to leave you wondering how they designed it. And this behemoth even puts some of them to shame. It houses 9 motors (one servo, one XL, one L, and six M motors) and is controlled by three Sbricks. It even has lights! Simply put, it’s ridiculously cool.

If you’d like to see more like this, take a look at a couple more of Eric Trax’s other farming equipment builds.

Home, home on the range

Ah, farms. One hundred percent of us humans eat, but in the United States, less than six percent of the population is involved in growing it. Now, I’m not a farmer, but I did enjoy some tomatoes and peppers from my backyard garden this year, so I feel downright rustic as I type this article on a state-of-the-art laptop with high-speed wifi. But having grown up in the upper Midwest, part of America’s Breadbasket, I feel kinship with this rural LEGO scene by John Snyder. Do I own a tractor? No, but I kind of wish I did. Do I keep chickens? No, but my wife has been insisting that we should. Goats, too, though I don’t think city ordinances would allow them. Maybe someday I’ll have a barn and an awesome windmill to draw up water from the well. Mine probably won’t be made of LEGO shields, though.

Western Homestead

Do you like farms and barns and livestock, too? Then check out our TBB farm archives! And don’t forget to look up John Snyder, too, and you’ll see why he’s competing for the title of Iron Builder.

Case and Bunning! They’re hard-boiled cops! Or farm equipment.

As much as I would have loved to have written an edge-of-your-seat cop action drama, this will be about farm equipment. Still, you’ve got to appreciate the love and attention Michał Skorupka gives to these LEGO creations. The red tractor is the International Harvester Case 1455 XL while the blue thingamajigger is the Bunning Lowlander 105mk4. For those of us more versed in hard-boiled cop dramas than farm equipment, the Bunning Lowlander is…a manure spreader. I’m pretty sure I can still integrate that in with some hard-hitting, no-nonsense cop drama dialogue. “My partner Bunning here has a unique set of skills, see? You don’t want to know! So lemme ask ya one more time. You feeling lucky, punk?” In case you are feeling lucky and would like to stick around for a while, why not buckle in and check out our vehicle archives featuring farming vehicles, police vehicles and everything in between.

Quiet days in the garden

Sometimes the simplest builds are the best. Jonas Kramm is a talented and versatile LEGO artist who consistently delivers excellent creations, big and small. He is currently doing a vignette series, and this one is my recent favorite. There are so many cute details packed into a little space. The rabbit hutch, birdhouse, gnome, and picket fence are all so cleverly crafted. In particular, using skis for fence boards is a brilliant idea. Alongside the satisfyingly white-trimmed shed, it all fits perfectly.

04 - Garden

While you’re here, you can check out all of Jonas’ latest builds in our archives. (Including the first three vignettes in this series.)

It ain’t much but it’s a couple of tractors

Designing scaled farming machinery is, in equal measure, fun and challenge. It’s all about sketching a neat chassis, adding just the right amount of grills and pipes to the engine’s exterior, and, of course, building a piece of farming equipment to attache to a tractor. Vladimir Drozd nailed all of these in his splendid designs. It is their clean yet very realistic exteriors that instantly caught my eye. With just a handful of curved slopes, Vladimir managed to create simple models without overloading them with way too complicated building solutions.

Tractor

It’s so easy to spoil a great creation with an unsuitable exterior element, but I applaud the author’s decision to complete the red tractor with a couple of road signs.

Tractor