Barns, Cows and Country Living

I love barns.  Old ones and new ones.  Barns seem not to exist everywhere like they did once.

When I was a kid. I think that there are fewer people who farm than there are now.

Growing up in a tourist town in Michigan, I didn’t see a barn until I was off to Michigan State University where they had a barn. MSU was not long away from being Michigan Agricultural College and it still had barns. Maybe MAC had barns, but this poor undergrad did not have a camera, so I have no pictures of any barns there or anywhere else for that matter.

But I have taken a few pics of barns while vacationing and a few around my new hometown of Mountain View AR. There are farmers here. In fact, our property is right next door to a cattle farm. And in this part of the world, free range cattle are normal.  Meeting cows in the front yard is not unusual.  

Or while driving to town, we have traffic slowdowns as we wait for cows to cross the road.

But back to barns.

This is a barn in Tennessee, found while vacationing near the Smokies.

The top of the barn seems to be where hay is stored, right? How do they get it up there?  And then how do they get it back down?

You can tell I grew up in a tourist town where rich people in boats from Milwaukee came to summer. People didn't have barns.