A Smelly Exercise - Cow Patties

Identify several smells that bring back memories. Since I am working on my grandparents, I am going to list several smells. Of course, the main one is . . .

1. the woodstove. I wrote about it for the taste exercise

2. fresh manure. I still smell that occasionally when I go to the farm

That's about it for now. Nothing else stands out, although there must have been foods, and the smell of warm milk and the cows.

I guess it will be

Cow Patties

It permeates the landscape, at least as far as the bottom of the hill. Processing cow dung for fertilizer is a way to reuse and recycle. I don't know how healthy it is, after all I hear about methane, but it sure made the vegetables grow in our garden. Nowadays, the barn is history, but the smell lives on in my memory, revived occasionally when our neighbours up on the hill do something with it. I'm not quite sure how it's done, although I seem to recollect a machine at the farm which was used. Perhaps I have blocked that memory. It's not a lovely subject, is it? But, truth be told, it's not a smell that I find offensive. It's a good, clean, smell to me. Mind you, I generally stepped around the patties in the field, but the odd crumbs that landed on my sneakers were rather gross. The cattle in the modern farm up on the hill never leave the barn or their paddocks, so the manure is contained. Being the clean, sanitary barn that it is, and being that they give tours of the milk room and host community games night, it is imperative that it is cleaned up. All of the people around are accustomed to the odour, and I suppose are rather nose-blind.

It's a smell I often smell as I step outside my air-conditioned car and make my way through the hay field that used to be a dirt driveway and manicured lawn. I know I have arrived. I am in the present and in the past. I am walking with my Dad (1922 - 2005) into the barn which housed the cattle stalls, watching him shovel cattle dung into a wheelbarrow. Sometimes he even put it in a box and brought it home in the car with him, to add to his garden. After all, it's only recycled grass and hay, for that's all the cows eat. It's a natural process; we are just used to wiping and flushing. But . . . I remember the outhouse. It did not have the good, clean smell of the cattle manure. It was a quick fix for a little girl who was to busy to go into the farmhouse and up the stairs.

This is a free write; it's rather "crappy" writing.

FYI - the smell that I now smell comes from close to where I am standing and looking down the hill at our farm, in my blog header photo. Well, it used to be a farm. It is to be cremated this spring. My heart breaks.