Pastures New (ELC Wooden Farm)

Member Name: MagdaDH

Product:	ELC Wooden Farm
Date:	19/06/09 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: very playable, nice looking

Disadvantages: really does need to be glued together, takes up lots of space when stored

We bought this farm for our toddler when he was about 2.5 years old. The set we have is slightly different (bigger) to the one depicted in the picture here:

http://www.elc.co.uk/content/img/product/109893_m a.jpg


...but the principle of the toy appears to be the same: it's a flat-pack wooden (or rather MDF) farm, consisting of several buildings (barn, cowshed, stable, chicken coop, pigsty etc.). Originally this came without animals and was I think about £20 from ELC. We bought it when it was offered with "free" animals; now it's £35 and includes the animals.

It takes a while to set up, and it definitely requires an adult or at least a teen to do that, as the dowels are quite fiddly to fit into the holes.

In fact, we have glued the whole set together which means that the buildings don't collapse and that the roofs stay on. I would definitely recommend doing this unless you are going to play with the farm very carefully and always supervise your child.

For an older child, it might be a good option to leave the roofs unglued to allow easier access to the buildings.

The farm has plenty of playability in it, what with setting up the buildings, putting animals in, taking them out to pasture and similar. Animals are excellent: solid, very lifelike, in different poses. It would be good if some humans came with the farm too. As it is, it's possible to buy a family for another £10 and some farm vehicles for roughly round that price (but then ELC toys are expensive overall).

The barn is pretty good, with a winch equipped with a magnetic "hook" and bales of straw to pull to the upper level of the building. Sadly, we lost the winch handle very quickly, but that isn't the fault of the toy :-)

I was not impressed with the base for this set, it consists of several pieces that don't lock together and isn't very big - but we usually make some extra pasture with coloured paper.

I think this is an excellent toy overall, probably one of the ones my child played most of all: daily for many weeks after receiving it, and even now six months later it still comes out every so often.

Highly recommended, although glueing the buildings together is an absolute must.

Summary: excellent farm