At the Farm Gate

By Joanie Stiers

June 2009



If the garage smells great, you’ll want to roll in the hay field



He stepped from the attached, two-stall garage, exhaled and smiled. “Ahh, the garage smells great,” he said. I swallowed my laughter too late; he was serious. The combination of vehicle fumes, grass clippings and basketball possessed the mood-lifting powers of lavender for this New York City resident. He views the garage and its corresponding fragrance as a small-town luxury.

The New Yorker visited my in-laws’ home recently with eight of my sister-in-law’s friends. This visit is among several interactions I have throughout the year with big-city friends who experience our area of tiny-town Illinois. I learn something new to appreciate at every meeting, but the garage’s odor was among the least of my predictions.

I decided that if he likes the garage so much, he should vacation here for some rural aromatherapy – with fragrances we country folk most enjoy. The three or four times a summer when Grandpa mows the hay tops the list. The hay’s sweet smell is worth bottling, and jumping the fence for, if you’re a cow.

Or, I suggest smelling welcome rain through slow nasal inhalation with your eyes closed. By “welcome,” I mean a rain the crops need. Farmers breathe through only their mouths when the crops don’t need the rain. (OK, not really. But by comparison, it’s hard to enjoy the smell of a grilled ribeye steak when you’re full.) I’m unsure whether I like the smell of the rain or everything it makes wet besides our dog.

It takes practice to appreciate the fragrance of quality, black soil. I believe the aroma of freshly turned soil keeps the neighbor content with his cab-less tractor for field work. Meanwhile, most farmers use tractors with a climate-controlled cab, leaving only those outside the glass to ride high on soil fumes.

Then, I could offer an itinerary filled with other pleasant, rural fragrances: fall’s harvest air, lightly toasted marshmallows on a wiener roast fire or the local pork producers’ food pavilion at the county fair. After a few aromatherapy sessions, we could step inside for a home-cooked dinner, an aroma commonly shared and appreciated, whether in Little York or New York. I predict that most anyone can prepare a meal that smells better than the garage.