Chapter 15 - Smells

Early Summer 2006

There is something missing!

A fabulous morning! Why not the feeling of panic that it may rain … have we turned the hay enough, will it be drammed up today, will the baler arrive? I know what’s missing … the smell! That dry-sweet smell of hay. It is the first year that we haven’t made our own hay or silage and it has seemed to have obliterated a season; we have gone on into August without cutting any grass. We would need artificial manure (which is now very expensive) to produce a good crop of grass. Our cows are out in the winter and therefore there is no dung to pull out to put on the fields. Roy does use the chain harrow to break up the dung that is already on the grass and this spreads it around. When making silage, the grass is cut and baled straight away. Poly-wrap is used to wrap the big bales, it’s a bit like black cling-film. When the grass is cut for hay it must be dry before it is baled. This process is very weather dependent and the hay has to be turned several times before it is drammed (put into straight lines), so that the baler can pick it up from the ground, wrap it in a sort of netting (but not the ends) and deposit it on the ground. This method is inclined to leave quite a lot of loose grass in the corners and around the edges of the fields. I have spent ages with a long handled pike picking this up and clearing it out from the corners and putting it with the rest of the hay to be baled.

Silage bales can be stored outside but hay bales should be under cover. To grow and cut the crop of grass, turn it, bale, wrap and stack it makes it uneconomical to do now we are on a smaller scale. The machinery today is so much bigger, our fields quite small and the lane very narrow. I do miss the apprehension but it is channelled in a different direction, that is when autumn comes and we have to source our winters’ supply of fodder. However this year, 2007, we have a good source of silage and hay available to us.

On the farm I become more aware of the various smells. When the cows are in the field near the house the smell of cow dung penetrates the windows, but it is not an objectionable smell, just “cowy”. The autumn brings with it the smell of silage, which can be quite strong, and for most of the year there is the vanilla fragrance of the gorse. In the evenings, after a days’ rain, there is the fresh smell of the damp grass while walking over it, the soft sent of hay, the musty smell of a horse’s muzzle, the earthy odour of a fox and the “puppy” smell of a small puppy. The sense of smell seems to be very acute when living close to nature.

However there are the more horrible pongs like the pigeon house on a hot day and horse dung on the wheels of the car picked up going down the lane, to be discovered on parking the car and wondering where the smell is coming from. Now we know !!!!

Monica Olds