It rained last night. While a little bit of rain more often than not incites anxiety for hay farmers, this one did not. The humidity left behind felt like a warm blanket for the night. The morning was then cool, and even the bugs were laziIy humming near the damp grass and dirt. I often wonder if people in town feel the same way about the rain. I always hear the weather forecaster warn people to go inside in the summer afternoons, and return to enjoy the smell of rain in the evening.
I think we all love the smell of rain whether it is cleansing the pavement in town or refreshing the earth in the country, it has a rejuvenating effect on all of us. How often have we asked to bottle up that scent for our homes, but of course to no avail?
Once you’re outside of town, beyond asphalt roads, concrete sidewalks, and Kentucky bluegrass lawns, the smell of rain is completed with a host of other aromas that complement each other like a home-cooked meal. It might have rained a week ago, but in the spring, we smell dirt, and we love it! If you ever hear a farmer or his wife say they want a dirt candle, you will now know why. We have a lot of dirt, and not all of it is created equally. While many spend time sweeping dirt out of their houses, we joyfully spend our time working in it and on it. Each spring we smell fresh, moist dirt as farmers plow under last year’s stubble and volunteer crops. Driving toward a field, one can usually smell it as quickly as they can see it; long lines of deep chocolate brown or red fields emanating a scent that is wholesome, earthy, and pure. Sometimes it is accompanied by the sounds of a throttled-up tractor or if you’re really close, you might even hear the squeaky, creaky spinning of disks as they bring up the wet ground from below. To have the pleasure of walking in this field with bare feet is what I imagine heaven feels like. The ground is softer than anything felt in town or even elsewhere in the country. The air mixed with the heavy soil creates a feathery footing that you could only selfishly take a few steps on before deciding to step back the way you came. There is no sense in sullying the pristine field and all the work someone put into creating that perfect seedbed for planting, not for walking.
By early summer, there is a distinct cleanliness in the air. Whatever dirt that was kicked up during cultivation is now settled on the roads and windowsills, and a new smell rises from little green crops poking their way out of the dirt. Sprays mixed with ample water, a mini rain wets the ground once again. Its remnants then hover, waiting for the wind to carry it gently into nothingness. From a mile away, one can smell work. The smell is attention to detail. Persistence. Love and dedication in ensuring a field stays green, healthy, and clean—free of pests that devour crops and weeds that spread noxious pollens and seeds. The smell of summer spraying is like the smell of gasoline. Some love it, and they can’t really explain why. Some cringe at the uses and argue about ethics. The common ground is that it is used for production that benefits us all.
Then the crops grow. You can’t smell the growth, or even see it in a day, but it happens while we are busy. Some drive into town each day and some are on the fields watering them, and one day after the initial olfactory pleasures have been forgotten until next season, we are given the gift of a finished crop.
As harvests roll around, and the fall winds begin to blow, the haze of wheat dust should be captured for the coloring of wall paint or dish towels. Purple flowers bloom out on soybeans, potatoes, and alfalfa. If only perfume could come in the scent of crop flowers. It is soft and sweet and not quite fresh, but rather substantial as if it commands the respect it deserves for growing season after season and year after year, long before farmers were ever around to cultivate and enjoy it. Alas, it must be harvested. Hay crops in particular retain their beauty during harvest. Though wheat looks beautiful while being cut and shines afterwards for a day or two like blonde hair in the sun, alfalfa unimpressively lumps onto the ground where it then most impressively begins its aura. The cool moisture of the leaves begins to seep out taking with it a smell of purpose. It is a masculine smell, heavy and strong--staying only a day or two before it is lost to the next venture. It is a smell of work and drive. It takes weeks of water and hours in a swather to make it, and breathing it in deeply reminds us of the work still left to do. It is a time-consuming crop that demands constant attention and arduous tenacity to have a final product. Because of its depth and need for dedication, it becomes that much more alluring to the farmers that have the grit to grow it.
In the end, the more the sights and smells of agriculture provide a sensory playground for us, we more we realize we can’t ever take them with us. We cannot and should not have the smells of nature and hard work in our homes because they only smell so powerfully after putting forth the effort to enjoy them. We don’t deserve the smell of a plowed field without doing the plowing, and to selfishly take inside the smell of rain on our cities and fields would mean no one is going outside to appreciate the gifts given to us, a reward for work and appreciation. Harvest above all deserves to be recognized as the quintessential smell of labor. It is the culmination of a season or more of stamina in cultivating the crop, ensuring its safety and growth, and patiently waiting to harvest it. It brings a year’s worth of income in the days or weeks of a harvest, but the sensory pleasure it provides is a perk of the job that only the farmer can deeply enjoy as reward for our labors.
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