Young or old, big or small, a good toy can be enjoyed by all. The Yorkton Farm Toy Show is built on that idea, and again this year displays, vendors and a wide variety of toys of all sizes were on display at the event.
It would be more accurate to call the creations of Yorkton’s Dean Spokowski miniatures rather than toys, though they could easily hold up to play if one chose to do so. His grain bins, barns and farm buildings could easily be confused with the real thing, apart from their size.
Spokowski likes working with metal, and says it has been a passion for him since he was a teenager. That’s reflected in his day job at Royal Sheet Metal, and now in his hobby, creating these toys. The toys are built entirely out of aluminum. The barns, grain bins and fertilizer bins started life as metal flashing and parts intended for eavestroughs, before turning into intricately detailed farm buildings.
“It’s all I’ve ever done, I’m just doing something I really enjoy, and it’s creative... I was inspired right out of high school, right from day one. How you could take flat metal and make things.”
He makes everything during calving season on his farm, because it gives him something to do while waiting for cattle to give birth, as he cannot be too far away from the animals. All of his toys are created in the hayloft of his barn as a result.
The buildings he creates are very highly detailed, and Spokowski’s goal is to make them as close to real life as he possibly can.
“When I’m done with the setups, when you take pictures, you have to look really hard at the photos to tell if it’s an aerial photograph of a farm or toys.”
He has not displayed his work for 25 years, since displaying a bin at the Western Canadian Farm Progress Show, but plans on taking them to toy shows across the prairies in the future. He wants to show people what he created because it gives people joy.
“It brings out the hearts of people... The response is overwhelming, that’s what I get out of it, I get to see that. All ages, from five to eighty-five... Just sparkles in their eyes.”
Children and toys are naturally close together, and it is tradition for the Farm Toy Show to donate to a child in the community who is facing a medical crisis explains organizer Kim Mehrer. This year, that child is Halle Thompson. Diagnosed with a chronic intestinal pseudo obstruction, Thompson has made nine trips to the operating room for abdominal surgeries, ileostomy placement, multiple biopsies, scopes and four central line insertions. The family has been away from home for 227 days for Thompson’s medical treatment. The toy show’s pedal tractor raffle raised $1,510 for the family, which includes a $100 donation from an attendee, and the charity tractor at the toy auction was sold for $400, with Yorkton Auction Centre matching the sale price for a total of $800 raised from that initiative.
