powerrabbit

No, there's no limited number on 'Stout Hearts' Bill so I guess that it was an unlimited edition. Very similar to 'Turning on the headland', which looks like it's based on the earlier study, you'd see the differences if you put one beside the other for comparison.

Here's my latest BFA aquisition. Arrived today via eBay, 1990 study by Ray Ayres 'Stout Hearts' I know it's not a tractor but there is horsepower involved.

I suspect that my Sister-in-law will be devouring most of it!, she eats it straight out of the jar with a spoon, most of it never sees a slice of bread, she's already eaten a jar of gooseberry jam I gave her three days ago. No, I'll sell some of it and give some to other family members, that which I shall sell will pay for the sugar, other than that there was no cost involved in the making of it. My Mother used to make her own marmalade, every January when the Seville oranges came in she would buy a half hundredweight and about the same amount of sugar and spend a week shredding the oranges and making the marmalade, that kept us going for almost 12 months on our toast every morning, I just buy ready made now I'm here on my own, it works out cheaper than making it, use about a jar a week on my 4 rounds of toast every morning plus I keep the jars for my jam making. I don't buy that sickly sweet jelly like stuff that's a poor excuse for marmalade, that which used to have a Golly on the jar, you know the stuff, I like it a bit stronger with a bit of rind in it.

Dry day so picked more raspberries off the short row in the garden before the blackbirds have them all. Took off 5lb and have just finished making into jam, ended up with 8 pound jars. That's 22 jars of jam I've made to date.

The variants with the straight legs Bill only came in the sets. I believe that the one in the 'road' series was yellow with black rams and frame, straight legs, no name decal or a red and white diagonal stripe decal. I think it was with the yellow road series BM Volvo tractor.

Can be a bugger of a place in the dead of winter, you have to make sure your log and coal shed is full, also your oil tank and the deep freezer and it's always a good idea to keep your standby generator serviced. Nice place in the spring, summer and autumn but we can get all four seasons together in one day at any time of the year. There are literally hundreds of books on Dartmoor, I've got quite a large and extensive library of them, some are now very rare, especially early copies and can command quite high prices.

There is another local legend relating to this rock. It's said that back in the early 1600's a joung woman was drawn to the local little town fair by the sound of the music and festivities coming across on the wind, she succumbed to the temtation to go and left her newborn baby in its cot out in the garden of the house she lived in forgetting all about it. On her return home the next morning the cot was empty and no child could be found. A month later the remains of the child were discovered on top of the rock of which the crows were said to have taken the child and picked its bones clean. Said to be a true story, even an article was printed in a local paper in the 1950's about it, something to do with a series of articles on local legends that the paper was running at the time. Dartmoor is full of legends and mysteries.

Probably not the correct place to follow on Bill but there is another big lump of granite about the same distance to the West of me, this one is called Blackenstone rock, the previous one is called Heltor rock. They are in fact Tors, as the Tors on Dartmoor, extinct volcano 'plugs' from whence time began. There is a legend about these two rocks, it is said that a pair of giants lived on each one and they hated each other and hurled big rocks at each other until one eventually killed the other, it is said that this is why there are a large amount of big rocks more or less in a line in the fields between the two big rocks that 'fell short' when they were chucking them at each other, there is an area on the local map close by that is marked as 'giants grave' wher one of them was reputed to have been buried, there is a long deep depression in the ground visible. Here's Blackenstone rock. (Perhaps another thread should be started titled 'your area landmarks')

Here's a few pictures taken earlier this evening that hopefully will demonstrate the zoom on the new camera. A big lump of granite 1/2 a mile away looking across the back of my fields. It was a little hazy as we'd just had a bit of thunder and a very heavy downpour. First is in mormal mode, second is 1/2 zoom, third is full zoom.

I'll take a few better pictures with it and post up, battery has to be charged up really and is easy as it charges from the PC USB cable through the PC or through the cable plugged into the mains USB plug. Have not loaded the disc onto the computer yet, don't want to clutter up the laptop, don't really need the CD manual and some picture programme that's on it, got a good programme already installed.

This is just a 'messing about' picture Bill, uploaded straight from the camera to here, I hope it comes out ok. Taken in the cameras '3D' mode. You may have to put on your 3D glasses to see it properly.

Bought myself a new digital camera today. Thought I'd have a go at the new Panasonic DMC-TZ30 that they've been banging on about on the TV ads. Must say, in the hour I've been playing around with it, that the 20x full HD zoom on it is fantastic and the rest of the features puts it up there with some SLR digitals. Not a cheap camera but Panasonic are offering £35 cashback if you register it online sending them a scanned receipt and the barcode on the box as proof of purchase if you do it before the end of July. Take a look at this camera and its features on the Panasonic website, look at the PDF manual for it, this gives you a better idea of the functions and what the camera will do.

There is the potential for bumper crops and heavy yeilds this year providing that we get suitable weather in which to harvest these crops. At the moment the potato crop is suffering badly with the crop rotting in the ground, the price here per 20kg bag was £3 a couple of weeks ago, today it's £20 a bag. Winter cerials are now turnibg fast but if they can't be harvested because of the wet then the crop will start to sprout out and/or start to lay. Soft fruit has suffered particularly badly with local 'pick your own' growers just telling people who venture out to them to just help themselves, they would sooner give it away than see the crop just spoil. There is still a lot of grass left to be cut here around Dartmoor which should be being cut now for hay, first cut pit and bale silage has in the main been taken off but the grass that should be being cut now is rotting in the bottom and even if it does dry up it will have to be down for a lot longer to allow the ground and the grass to dry out, we never usually gut grass when the ground is wet as it always drys better standing.. Things are getting serious now.

They say that it's going to remain in the same pattern for at least several more weeks unless the position of the jet stream changes. The jet stream being so far further South than normal is keeping the air flow around the UK in more or less a continuous and static position which is keeping the low pressure systems we've been having just going around in circles.

A few of these from eBay. You don't often find them with David Brown on them .

Probably the same guy that demonstrates it here at Widecombe Fair every September, I and a few of my mates bought the pack he was offering 2 years ago and was so impressed with it we bought another pack each last year, it has a fridge life of 15 years, far better than any of the superglues you can buy and it dries clear. Yes, this auto censor is getting on everyones t-i-tt-ies!

Yes that is the problem in the ***ility of these diecast and hollow cast items, you can't put any heat to them to solder and there are no particularly good glues on the market to enable a satisfactory and strong repair coupled with a fracture or break usually comes with bending out of 'true' around the break as the metal stretches, I have found a very good glue to repair these items, up until recently you could not buy it as it was not commercially available but it is now if you know where to look for it, this glue will stick absoluteley everything except expanded polystyrene, Here it is, I can recommend it. http://www.powerbonduk.com/

Some of the Cherilea and Crescent figures and animals were very crude, Crescent types were a tad larger than the rest and appeared a bit 'fatter' but having said that all the makers seemed to go through stages of crudeness in their castings over the years. I also have seen several of the late 'Home Farm' sets being offered Sue, in both complete boxed sets and seperated into individual items, which I can't understand why, as the sets command a good price generally as I was told that they were poor sellers at the time and seperated into individual items I feel makes them loose their identity and actually devalues the item.

Thanks for that David. I did go through Joplins big yellow book but could not find any reference to this beehive or any pictures, like a lot of publications, there's always something that slips through, unless there are no examples in the collections that he drew his information from, I've never seen any at the toy fairs. I do have an example of the more conventional wooden sectioned box type with apex roof by John Hill & Co.

I think it's about time now that someone started a thread on this topic as David suggested some time ago, especially now as more of us seem to be appreciating the old lead figures and accessories so I'll start the ball rolling. Here are a pair of beehives that I have had now for several years and have dug them out today to carry out a little restoration on them, each has had a corner and one leg broken off but now fixed. I believe them to be by Britais as they have a large capital B on the bottom to one side and along another bottom side the word London and below opposite, England. The three little black dots on each at an angle above the landing platform and 'entrance' are supposed to represent bees.

From my observations and the atmosphere, also the amount of carrier bags and boxes that a lot of the general public was carrying around, I think it will promote itself to a certain extent but that doesn't mean that the organisers don't need to work on it. It would be nice to see the building as full as it was in previous times.

When I left it was very quiet on the front door so when I claimed my 'early entry' fee back, that's another story, I was asked by the two women on the door as to how I thought it was going, I told them that it appeared to have been organised very well and that the majority of the old regular stallholders had come and several new ones, ones that probably follow the Bulldog fairs who were reasonably situated to attend Exeter, and that all the stallholders I spoke to seemed to be jolly and happy, smiling and having a good day despite some not having at that time done a lot of selling and were enjoying the atmosphere as were the public. They were very pleased with what I told them, they said the fair was a bit of an experiment really as they didn't know quite what to expext. I told them that to promote it more they should advertise the next fairs there in all the newspapers that cover the SW of England as I did not see that it was advertised in any of our local papers and not just rely on their website and word of mouth. I think they took good notice of my comments. Well, I enjoed it, it was a good atmosphere.

Know what you mean David, you don't need justification in carpet farming, just imagination, it's like the Britains lead man and water barrel cart, pretty useless in the real world as the water would slop too much and for the relative size of it you'd never push it with the weight of water it would hold, I would say that would be better described as a pig swill bin. Suppose the long handled cart could also be used for moving around the odd sheaves of corn or thatching reed or any other long loose or contained light materials such as a sack of bran or chaff to feed the horses.

That's interesting David, is the moulded load on the barrow/cart 170/9 part of the casting or seperate?, I ask as there is no indication on the one I bought today that there was a load with it originally and also does not show any load in Joplins big book, perhaps Timpo simplified it and cast it without.

It wasn't you Mark.