Down On The Farm

This morning I had the same breakfast as yesterday; pumpkin donut and a cup of Verona, only today I had a white nectarine instead of a peach. I’m trying to decide if I want to just go with that breakfast for four more days or freeze three or maybe even all of them so I have some variety…and some healthier breakfasts!

I did a challenge layout at Ginger Scraps that I’m very pleased with: Autumn Splendor

Credits: Falling Days by Keep In Touch Designs, 

based on Sweet Summertime template 1 by Connie Prince

I think I felt a need to do that layout because of the color we likely won’t get this year. In the “be careful what you wish for” world, I guess I really do want weather I’ll truly hate for a little while this winter. Very cold and snowy is good for spring flowers and the trees all summer. The drought conditions this summer further messed with the fall colors and on top of trees that didn’t get their winter rest last winter. I don’t expect the fall foliage to look as good his year.

Area farms are really suffering, though not as bad as other places that were hit harder by the drought. The corn is just not as tall as it should be and the ears not as big as they should be and the stalks started to turn brown too soon. Recent rain we’ve had has helped save the soybeans. In fact, the soybeans are looking fall-good!

Soybean field and a CSX train near Carey, Ohio, 8/31/12

As promised last week, I have a set of barns that I shot on the way home from the Norfolk Southern Heritage Unit Festival in Spencer, NC on the Fourth of July. On the way home we stopped to see the barns at Bob Evans Farms!

Here’s the main visitor’s area barn:

I love the barns with quilt squares on them and this one is so bright and defined. Of course, this is a visitor’s center barn and not a farm-working barn.

I’d seen the photographs and the picture on the menus at Bob Evans restaurants. I know through the wonders of retouching and adding graphics there are two barns that may or may not be painted with logos. I was sure the Ohio Bicentennial Barn for Gallia County was there and I hadn’t read anything that it was painted over

Gallia County Ohio Bicentennial Barn

If anything the Bicentennial logo has been kept up. I like that! I am fascinated by the project of putting the logos on a barn in each county to celebrate the state’s bicentennial. I thought it was a cool idea in 2003 when Ohio celebrated 200 years as a state. I became a little geekier about them when I became a resident of Ohio in 2007. Almost a decade later I know I won’t see and photograph the barns that were painted in all 88 counties because I know a few of them have already been painted over, but I want to see and photograph as many of them as I can, letting the photos date the painting with the natural weathering where there is weathering and the commitment to preserving the logo on some. The one at Bob Evans Farm is well-maintained!

I also know from some older photos that the Bob Evans logo on the barn in front of the Bicentennial Barn was photoshopped in on the menus. There are lots of photos of the Bicentennial Barn with a blank barn in front of it. It was my opinion that they really should put the Bob Evans logo on that barn because it was appropriate for the first barn you see at Bob Evans Farms and it would just look good. Guess what that first barn when we drove in looks like?

You can see the Bicentennial Barn behind it. From the right spot, here are the barns together:

Bob Evans, “down on the farm” for great food, great barns…and we have to work on the coffee.