You Smell Like the Farm

There isn't much that can really make my day like someone who loves me telling me, "You smell like the farm!" That is exactly what Nancy did last night as I trudged up the stairs, long after the lights had been turned out, and trying quietly to enter our room. "You smell like the farm!" wasn't an insult, it was a commentary on the events of the day and a reminiscence of how nearly every day used to mark its presence in my life when I was a dairy farmer.

It was in the way I smelled . . . and last night, as I walked up the stairs, I smelled of raw gasoline and grease. I had been repairing and readying the rototiller for working up the garden, which included the necessity of tearing apart, cleaning and rebuilding the carburetor. When all was complete, I fired up the old Briggs and Stratton on the Springfield rototiller and, much to the dismay of our nearby neighbors at 10:00 at night, I tried it out on a corner of the garden. It worked! And, it left me smelling of all that I had been doing. Ah, what a smell!

In stopping by the farm briefly today, between a regional pastor's meeting and hospital calls, I stepped out of the car only to be frozen in mid-stride by the smell of Springtime on the farm. That smell includes cattle, liberal doses of corn silage and alfalfa hay, manure spots over the driveway where yesterday the manure spreader had passed several times, grease and diesel fuel undertones from the shop area, all intimately wound in the spacious lifting of red bud and magnolia trees in bloom. Ah, the smell of the farm in Springtime! If Ralph Lauren would ever deign to bottle it, maybe marketing it for the more romantic ones among us as, 'Springtime in the Cow Barn', he would probably sell more of it than all the other 'toilet waters' combined. Maybe it is the redneck in me, but there is something about that combination, especially in this time of the year, that just makes me feel good about life.

These are the smells of a new chapter being turned in God's creation. These are the smells of stewardship and machinery mechanics blending their time together. These are the smells of livestock running and kicking up their heels in the pasture, relishing these first moments of freedom after a long Winter of being cooped up. These are the smells of God's work in the birthing of the buds in the trees, in the lively response from the waters of the pond, and the distant echoing of robins in the field. These are the smells of life, God's life opened up and poured out for all people to drink in and be satisfied. It can't be smelled through the closed windows of a car or soaked in through the tightly shut doors of our living.

You have to step out of your comfort zone and take it in, gift that it is, and savor it. It is about getting your hands dirty while cleansing your heart in hard work. It is about sweating over the details while celebrating the bigger picture. It is about joining hands with God in the earthiness of who we really are while delving deeply into the soul of God in tending to the earth as you pray God tends to you.

To me, it is about smelling like the farm. There is really no greater compliment, especially in times like these. It roots me. It restores me. It gives me strength for another day.

I slept well last night in the knowledge that the farm was not far away, its' smell a part of me, my soul a part of it. It is God's tender blessing for those who farm, for those who work God's fields, and my heart is full, pondering that anyone could think that I could be of such a distinctive order and nature. May you be so blessed.

Your servant in Christ,

Pastor Don