Another surprise adventure!

Life is full of happy surprises, it seems. A couple of weeks ago, Peter and I were talking about the possibility of expanding our offerings into Europe. I began researching trade shows for theme parks and agritourism farms. I discovered the biggest and best farm (Tulley’s Farm) is in England. Last Thursday morning, I got a call from my friend Chris (Clovermead Farms) in Ontario to talk about a project he is doing on his farm. He also mentioned he was travelling to visit this same English farm on Monday (today) and asked if I wanted to come along. Although it was last minute, this was a wonderful opportunity that we could not possibly pass up. So early this morning, I was on a plane to Toronto to join up with my friend Chris. Our plane to England leaves in a few hours, and we arrive tomorrow morning. A few friends will join us, including a farmer from Texas and another from Poland. By happy coincidence, Darlene & Nathan, the Downey’s Farm owners (Ontario) will also be there as well.

I look forward to learning plenty and meeting with great people. While I wait in the airport, I’ve set up my mobile office once again and am doing my best to do a little design work. Stay tuned for reports on this exciting adventure…

Instant success

One question we often get is: how on earth did we end up in this fun business? We started small and just did it. Our first projects were for people we already knew. We were asked if we could build a “whatever,” and the answer was always YES! Then I would rush to my drawing board to figure out how on earth we might accomplish the task. At first, the materials and tools we used were ones we were already familiar with. Our skill level wasn’t very high in those days, and we had few tools. The projects were relatively tiny in scope, and the budgets were very modest. Because we were largely flying blind and experimenting a great deal, we didn't make much profit either. Many things went wrong along the way, but with every project we learned a great deal. The things that didn’t work were quietly deposited in the dumpster. Education is never cheap.

One such early project (from more than 35 years ago) was this ‘space ship’ for an arcade. We hauled it to our customer’s worksite, about a hundred miles distant from our shop and had two blowouts on the way on account of a much too heavy load, a much too small and light home-built trailer. That dilemma was fixed with the slim profits of this job.

That was a first lesson to purposely build in an allowance for a few new tools into every project, which permitted us to tackle more complex and larger projects more efficiently as we went along. For many years we did our prefabrication in the single car garage attached to the basement of our house. When we did some fibreglassing or other odour-causing work, the family instantly knew it upstairs. In the early days, we hired my good friend Norm to do the welding. Every project was a little more complex and a little grander, as our skills and reputation grew. We always did our best to deliver much more than we promised, and always worked hard to beat our self-imposed deadlines. In the beginning, I continued to do other work, painting murals and doing commercial art, gradually phasing those out as we got busier with the theme work. Sure enough, after years of hard work and a lot of on-the-job training, I became an ‘expert,’ and our business was an ‘instant’ success.

Scary feature

We absolutely love building larger-than-life features. For years, whenever we talk to a new farm about a landmark feature, we’ve proposed a giant scarecrow. To customize the feature for each farm, I’ve drawn up numerous versions through the years, but although many farms have been interested, other projects have always taken priority. But as always, great ideas never go away; they have to wait their turn. We were delighted to get a call from Downey’s Farm in Caledon, Ontario, giving us the go-ahead to begin fabrication of their version of this delightful feature. Stay tuned as this magical piece comes together in our shop over the next months…