![\"Grazing](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2037\/2450477872_c75e3883a1.jpg\")
<\/a>Cows.<\/p>\nThe valley was known for its dairy farms. Dairy farms have cows. Cows produce manure. Manure has a distinctive smell.<\/p>\n
Time passes. You move on to other places. You forget the smell of manure.<\/p>\n
Years later, after college, I lived in Pennsylvania's Amish country. My neighbors on the one side raised cattle. My Amish neighbors up the road? Cattle. I remember mornings driving to work where I had to stop and wait for the little Amish boys to finish driving the herd across the road, from one field to another.<\/p>\n
The familiarity of the odor of cow manure came back. It was everpresent.<\/p>\n
Last weekend, I drove up to Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, largely on a lark. It was a pretty day, too pretty to spend around the house.<\/p>\n
I drove through farm country. I saw combines turning over the harvested cornstalks. I saw cows. I smelled the manure.<\/p>\n
Honestly?<\/p>\n
I smiled at that.<\/p>\n
It's an awful<\/i> smell, manure. But it's also a strangely comforting smell. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
At times, I miss the smell… Of cow manure. In my childhood years, I lived in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. My elementary school, Linville-Edom, stood on a barely paved road in the midst of the valley's rolling farm country. Across the street was a farm. To either side of the school? Farms. And what was notableContinue reading “On What I Miss About Childhood”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[695,4093,4107,101],"class_list":["post-5391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-childhood","tag-life","tag-memes","tag-plinky","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"