Dear Auntie Mac,

Our family moved to Hampton last fall and we love the town and look forward to the warmer months. However, we returned home yesterday afternoon and our senses were assaulted by the most offensive odor we have ever encountered which, I’m informed, is manure. Since there’s no farm anywhere near us, can someone please explain to me how this is possible? Why is it necessary? How often does it occur? How long does the smell linger? Is there a viable alternative? How can I find out who is responsible? Is there anything that can be done? Please, someone tell me we don’t need to spend summer indoors with the windows closed!

We are,

Loving Everything Else Here

My Dear Neighbor:

Your Auntie Mac has been many things during her rather extended stay on the planet: penmanship consultant to the Second Earl of Gloucester, honorary judge at the Istanbul Akhal-Teke championship, and even Assistant Truffle Gatherer for the Bavarian Cake Ministry, but never in her eclectic career has she been asked to act as Manure Referee in a rural town in Spring. But she will, for her readers’ sake, put on her Wellies and wade in. “No farm anywhere near us,” you say? You haven’t been out much, have you, dear? Hampton is a rural community, full of what is known as “prime agricultural soils.” Meaning that when the rest of the state has built its last high-rise, we will still be able to grow our own food. And hay, and corn, and pumpkins, and strawberries. And I will wager that lots of those things are grown quite near you. So every spring, even with nary a farm animal in sight, tractors are galumphing past your house with loads of manure to spread in nearby fields so that things can grow. Naturally, they will trail a certain odor. Some, I grant you, are less appealing than others.  Myself, I prefer a Danish Jersey to a Brown Swiss, and certainly any bovine is superior to a few tons from the henhouse passing by. But it continues to absolutely baffle Auntie Mac to hear people who have moved “to the country” complain that there is just too much actual country near them, and wonder what they can do to shut it out, or better yet, to whom they can issue cease and desist orders. As for your question regarding a “viable alternative,” I have to ask: alternative to what? Producing food?

Unless you live right next to a thousand-hog farm, dear, I assure you that the fertilization season will pass, and all too quickly, for when it goes, so too goes the spring, and to spend it indoors with the windows closed, especially in Hampton, is to rob yourself of one of the true joys of being alive. This season, in this town, surpasses even the Bavarian Cake Festival.

Get yourselves outside, take a deep breath, and offer a prayer of thanks that you landed here.

Your Auntie Mac