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The Toy Farmer Restaurant- RIBS
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Toy Collecting on Route 66
Charles Perry
505-864-8159
The Old Spanish ruins mark a time when everyone relied on the tired old Rio Grande River for farming and ranching. Today people with an appetite for a collection of farm toys are as alluring as barbecue ribs they sell.
Located on historic old Route 66 in Los Lunas, New Mexico. Ribs restaurant looks as much like a sale barn with it’s restored farm equipment distributed resolutely next to a paved parking area.
The old rebuilt red McCormick Farmall tractor greets you. Glistening in the sunlight, without a doubt a beauty. It’s clean enough to have just come out of the factory. Sitting proudly next to it is an old rebuilt McCormick-Deering Big-6, with a Buckeye seat. A magnificent red McCormick-Farmall affixed to International Harvester Plow shears sits to the right.
A little wagon with iron wheels having clefts attached sat by itself, looking closer; I tried to configure some means for this wooden image. A utility wagon? No an auger on the back with spines to grab and pull to an auger. Chain belts in the bed of the wagon well something must be coming in the wagon or leaving but I would say it probably is a manure spreader. Finished pieces so complete they had to have had a sizable amount of research and creativity to get it right.
Herb Pluemer who is also the collector and restorer of the farm equipment owns the land. He has helped create a Mecca. A farm collector’s paradise bringing individuals and organizations for dinners lunches and banquets.
Hard work and mechanical ability have saved old antique farm equipment from the scrap graveyard. Rebuilding them inside and out into the masterpieces they once were and making fully operational farm equipment.
Proud relics from the past, some still gleaming with the effect of their new paint, speak of a time that was, with each having it’s own story to tell.
Working these old antiques over, painting them and making a viable operational antique are an art form that Herb has mastered well. Almost as well as if they came off the assembly line. A fully in tacked hey rake, could be Farmall tractors and other machinery.
In the veranda a glassed in Farmall tractor on each side of the doorway greets you. Enclosed behind glass are his 1941 Farmall on the left and a 1934 Farmall McCormick-Deering on the right. A newly built stately looking restaurant that could have just as well been a museum, inside is home toy farm implements......and rebuilt antique tractors.
After a serious walk down memory lane outside walking inside is a complete surprise with the neatly secured farm toys, an untold amount of them, on little platform stair-step groupings keeps the eye moving. Every wall from the top of the windows to the ceiling a- very well thought out grouping, put together for all to see.
After leaving school he got away from farming though continued collecting. Herb spent his youth and high school years in Wisconsin, not far from Dyersville, Ia. where he worked the family farm with his parents. In the daytime it was school and most evenings were spent working the farm. Nostalgia for the toys was already getting into his blood. He liked to show the toy implements to little kids.
Now owner of a metal shop in Los Lunas, New Mexico, Herb has little spare time but does find time for rebuilding farm equipment. Look for him, ask where he is no one can tell you- he is on the go and no one knows where.
The latest addition to the ‘parking lot’ was hardly any more than scrap metal when he started now it is a fully operational tractor. His dedication to collecting could only be considered monumental.
Sharing his nostalgia with children and collectors alike, he is involved in it for personal reasons, some are not as grandiose as looking for the good old days. His collection is vast having untold numbers at the restaurant, but the bottom line is he wants to share his nostalgia. And with even more toys at his home as well as two or three pieces to be rebuilt there is educational fuel for the future.
It is ironic and surprising to see the toys in the restaurant, so many being those used in commerce by the mid-west farmer. The deserts of the Rio Grande Valley doesn’t hold a lot of collectables such as these except for tractors, many old tractors can be found here and probably just as many old John Deere chow wagons. Thos old John-Deere made wooden wagons that one sees in the western movies-yes many. They sit idle in fields and yards as decorations.
To intently look at each toy tractor, or other toy implement one can ‘feel’ that memory. For some in New Mexico a new memory has been reborn- those golden years reborn, a rebirth of the way it use to be.
For those with a real interest in farm toys, one could look for hours at these pieces in awe of the dynamic and symbolism, so much to remember. The restaurant itself features untold amount of diverse representations of the toy implements. Machines being pulled by the John Deere-Tractor are a real eye opener and the truck implements sitting atop of the overhang of the bar, painted the John Deere green, is quite a showpiece.
A strung Chili farming crop and cattle ranching and some vegetable and fruit farming themselves. Much of the labor coming from across the border and being done by hand. Thus few to none of the farm implements tractors and plows which are plentiful it is not only a nostalgic experience for the snow bird but in many cases a learning experience for the people who have lived here all there life. With an abundance of ranching, where horses are relied upon so much to herd cattle, few of those children have ever been exposed to the mid-west farm culture.
Beer brewery’s are another project fitting into the toy collecting, with an on site brewery company and the lounge affording them an opportunity to show their farm implement beer kegs right along with the wall and carousel pieces. Novel ideas to say the least, and quite attractive.
The lounge has a unique display, besides walls a carousel hangs resolutely from the ceiling where Herb has secured about 25 to 30 platforms for even more toy implements. It is about nine feet in diameter with a slow turn so one can enjoy all of the implements.
Herb’s collections are products of his success. How does he find time for all of this with a machine shop business to run? He said “He learned to work hard when growing up on the farm in Wisconsin.” His hard work and love for farm implements has fashioned a consciousness and a connection to the farm community culture of a New Mexico loved for it’s historic past.
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