Faraway hills have their foul sides too

FARAWAY hills must look awfully green for those stuck in cities during this crisis. But if it’s any consolation for folk who feel frustrated and long to get into the great outdoors for some fresh air and scenery, rural life is not all about smelling the roses this weather.

For super spreaders come in all forms. Some unfortunate country dwellers spent last bank holiday weekend not just in lockdown but also unable to even open their windows or go into the garden or anywhere.

“Right now, our considerate neighbourhood farmer is spreading slurry all around our house,” fumed one person I know. “I can’t do any washing and hang it out. I can’t breathe with the stink of it. I understand that he has to get rid of this stuff, but he has hundreds of acres. Does he have to put it all around our house during a lockdown?”

For city slickers who aren’t familiar with slurry, let me assure you that it is not an experience to sniff out. And I say this as someone who actually likes the smell of petrol and who, as a child, eagerly accompanied my mother into the dry cleaners to inhale the synthetic fumes.

But slurry takes your breath away for all the wrong reasons. Some days you have to drive down country roads with the car windows wound up tight, despite the sunshine and birdsong, because of the stink. It’s like the worst bad breath you can imagine — multiplied. Horse and cow manure has a fragrant aroma, in my opinion, but concentrated and chemically treated manure is a different kettle of rancid fish altogether.

But slurry isn’t the only rotten whiff around the rural neck of the woods. Another acquaintance stepped out the door of his cottage last weekend only to be hit by “a strong chemical smell and clouds of weedkiller drifting over me and my vegetable patch”. He traced the source to a tractor with commercial wings, spraying the acres surrounding a nearby new build.

Even more galling was the fact that the owner had whisked his young family off for the day, despite the lockdown, leaving his neighbour with not just the smell and stress of inhaling chemicals in the midst of a respiratory virus pandemic, but also rightly concerned about the danger it presented to the plants, birds and especially the bees who are already critically endangered.

“The owner says it’s safe because the weedkiller is organic,” the person told me in a text. “But sure, isn’t organic weedkiller an oxymoron? Organic poison is still poison.”

Another worry about weedkiller is that it kills native plants, allowing invasive species such as knotweed to take over, creating a whole new set of problems. Yet these country folk feel like their hands are tied when it comes to complaining. For living in a small rural community makes you avoid conflict where possible, as it can make things uncomfortable.

Which is why folk who live in faraway hills sometimes hanker after the anonymity of a city, where they would feel free to kick up a stink.