Kentucky Barns

Snow in the Field

 Flurries flying fast and furious

 Floating in midair

Never ceasing childlike and curious

Is my snowflake love affair

                                         M Smith

Silhoutte of Nature

Don't miss the chance
Take a minute 
and get a good glance
Every day there are 
new views to discover
New ways to become 
a nature lover
                               
                                      M Smith

Barns

Older barns were usually built from lumber sawn from timber on the farm, although stone barns were sometimes built in areas where stone was a cheaper building material.

Modern barns are more typically steel buildings. Prior to the 1900s, most barns were timber framed (also known as post and beam) forming very strong structures to withstand storms and heavy loads of animal feed. From about 1900 to 1940, many large dairy barns were built in northern USA.

These commonly have gambrel or hip roofs to maximize the size of the hay loft above the dairy roof, and have become associated in the popular image of a dairy farm. The barns that were common to the wheat belt held large numbers of pulling horses such as Clydesdales or Percherons. These large wooden barns, especially when filled with hay, could make spectacular fires that were usually total losses for the farmers. With the advent of balers it became possible to store hay and straw outdoors in stacks surrounded by a plowed fireguard.

Many barns in the northern United States are painted barn red with a white trim. One possible reason for this is that ferric oxide, which is used to create red paint, was the cheapest and most readily available chemical for farmers in New England and nearby areas. Another possible reason is that ferric oxide acts a preservative and so painting a barn with it would help to protect the structure.

Wiki

Backroads

A backroad is a secondary type of road, usually found in rural areas.

In North Carolina, where they are also referred to as "blue roads", the roads are often constructed of gravel, and are one or two-laned roads off of larger roads such as parkways.

In Vermont, the Natural Resources Conservation Service has established a better back roads program to help towns and organizations deal with road-related soil erosion problems through grants. Both paved and unpaved back roads are eligible for these grants, which seek to protect water quality from sediment accumulation caused by road and ditch erosion.


Wikipedia

Photo by M Smith

Sunset in Kentucky

Setting sun of Kentucky
Warm, high and free
Shine strongly please
Whilst I bid farewell to thee

                   
M Smith

Snowfall in Kentucky - Winter 2012

Snow is a form of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by external pressure. Snowflakes come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Types which fall in the form of a ball due to melting and refreezing, rather than a flake, are known as graupel, ice pellets or snow grains. Snowfall amount and its related liquid equivalent precipitation amount are determined using a variety of differentrain gauges.

The process of precipitating snow is called snowfall. Snowfall tends to form within regions of upward motion of air around a type of low-pressure system known as an extratropical cyclone.

Snow can fall poleward of these systems' associated warm fronts and within their comma head precipitation patterns (called such due to the comma-like shape of the cloud and precipitation pattern around the poleward and west sides of extratropical cyclones). Where relatively warm water bodies are present, for example due to water evaporation from lakes, lake-effect snowfall becomes a concern downwind of the warm lakes within the cold cyclonic flow around the backside of extratropical cyclones. Lake-effect snowfall can be locally heavy. Thundersnow is possible within a cyclone's comma head and within lake effect precipitation bands.

In mountainous areas, heavy snow is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation, if the atmosphere is cold enough.

wiki

Photo by M Smith