My House is Inhabited by Pickle Vampires
It's the only explanation.
They probably came in here to get out of the snow, like the mice.Snow band after snow band went over our house yesterday. First the air would be so full of feathery snow I could hardly see across the fenced yard, then it would taper off and brighten up as if the sun was about to come out.
One of the things I love about winter, besides air that smells so clean I want to bottle it, is all the lacy tree branches against the sky.See the little maple buds getting ready to break any time now?
And it's a good thing I have tree-lace as a back-up, because yesterday, in the snow, the farmer upwind of here spread manure. On the snow. In February. Whew. I've never been so glad to get another overnight snowfall in my life.
Of course, I've smelled worse -- there was the spring that the manure was left to anaerobically age in a heap across the road, and when they broke that puppy open in the spring, phewwww!
But it really doesn't matter what season of the year they spread it, because it always smells pretty bad. This isn't the barnyard smell of a couple of cows, mind you. It's an eye-watering, sinus-clearing punch to the head.
It's bad enough that several years ago, a county north of us produced a brochure called "If you are thinking about moving to the country," complete with manure scratch'n'sniff patches. (You can read the brochure as a .pdf file here , minus the scratch'n'sniff, or read a Michigan Farm Bureau article about the brochure.)
And in case I needed any more rural giggles, I took a survey the other day, and I had to choose whether I lived in a city, a suburb, a small city, or a rural area.
Their definition of "rural area": In a town with fewer than 50,000 people, not part of a large metropolitan area.
I think the people who wrote this definition need to get out in the country more. Preferably downwind of a field with freshly-spread manure.
Oh, yeah. Knitting.
I hate running out of yarn. Especially when the yarn store is far, far away, and I don't want to burn as many dollars in gas as the skein of yarn would cost.So I'm letting the pretty Jardin yarn exit gracefully, by alternating rows with gray. By the time I'm totally out of Jardin, I'll either be done with the socks, or else the cuff will be long enough that I'll just end in all gray.
Labels: Michigan weather, sock knitting, winter
posted by Alwen | 8:57 AM
3 Comments:
The people to the south of us feed cows for the winter. They seem to crowd far more into a pen than looks right (but what do I know). By the time spring arrives and it's time for the cows to go away, they're belly-deep in "mud". Once the cows are gone, they use a tractor/scoop to dig it all up and transport it to their fields. Oh, the aroma.
And this year they piled up one of their crops in a huge pile to let it rot. Then fed that (called musicilage, I think) to the cows. We knew right away when they broke the pile open.
But they used to raise pigs. Much worse. Not only the smell, but flies.
Love living in the country! (Our constantly-crowing rooster is our revenge!)
Ah Silage - smells like ammonia and the worst pile of Tomcat pee you can imagine!
They don't spread manure that way round here - tend more to dolomite and/or urea - but the farmer next to us just waits for the floods - he says that fertilises as well or better than commercial types!
Ah manure. One of the lovely (not) things about the country. Scratch n sniff manure - now that's an idea!!
Post a Comment
<< Home