Everyone must have a few things that are emotive of their childhood, perhaps a sight, a sound, or a smell. For me, growing up as I did on a small British organic farm in the 1970s, my emotive things are the smell of rain hitting parched earth, or of the slightly sulphurous diesel exhaust from a clapped-out Fordson Major tractor. And wheelbarrows, strangely. My dad, you see, is both a blacksmith by trade and an inveterate experimenter in the field of handcarts and barrows. A small self-sufficient farm generates a huge range of different loads that need carrying around, and he fashioned a variety of inventive contraptions for the purpose. Of most use are his oversized builder’s barrows with a full-size van wheel at the front and able to cross the bumpiest of ground, but other highlights included the low-loading barrow for shifting the heaviest one-piece loads, or the two-wheeler for very long objects.

As you might expect then, I have an eye for a barrow, as I’ve pushed a few in my time. So when I read about how traditional Chinese barrows are constructed, they caught my attention and I had to ask: why don’t we do it that way?

Continue reading “Our Gunpowder And Tea Came From China, Why Didn’t We Copy Their Wheelbarrows?” →