When I was a child my sisters and I would ride out in the country with my grandmother. We would ride to visit her friends , or ride to a old country church that she wanted to china paint. Living in the rural South there is naturally a lot of farm land around us, and so we would pass by farm after farm as she drove us in her old gray Buick. Farms have smells. You can smell some farms miles away, and you learn to associate the smell that goes with the farm at a young age. Cow farm smells are very distinct from chicken farm smells for example. You also learn the smells of the activity that are happening at the farm.
You can tell when a farmer has sprayed their cotton field, or when the soil is freshly tilled. It’s like when you know someone in the neighborhood just mowed the lawn. You smell it before you see it…. you see? I’ve walked you through all that just to say when she drove us we often smelled the smell of freshly tilled dirt, my grandmother would say to us “ Do you smell that? Mmmmmm I just love the smell of freshly tilled dirt?” Taking a deep breath to breathe in the smell I’d nod my head and smile in agreement, but secretly I was thinking …. “have you lost your mind? how can you love that smell?!?! It’s dirt!!!” Well I’ve lost my mind too because I am telling you I love that smell now. It’s a glorious smell. The smell brings back a lot of wonderful memories of my childhood which I’m blessed to say was such a happy one.
We are tilling lots of soil at the farm right now because we are planting so many new bushes. We’re wrapping up Zone 1 which is a 6 acre plot of land. Because the farm is small we just can’t move as quickly on projects like many other farmers do in the area. I drive out to the farm each morning with my farming essentials -work boots, long pants, an old t-shirt, and water. I meet the lady I work with on her golf cart, and we load up the plants we need for the area we will be working on. Once we have the bushes we ride out to the area where we will plant.
Each breath I take I breathe in freshly tilled soil, and it soothes my soul. Genesis 3:19 comes to mind as I ponder over my fondness of the smell of dirt “From dust you are and to dust you will return. “ The dirt is apart of me and molds me into who I am. I learned to work on this dirt with my sisters summer after summer. The dirt nurtures the blueberry bushes and continues to nurture me.