I sit about a quarter mile down wind of a small dairy farm. Occassionally when the wind picks up, I can smell the livestock. Some might find it offennsive, but in the light breeze it's rather pleasing. Farms all have smells, be it from animal waste or burning trash, but some how all are connected with rural life.

As I breathe in, I dream. I think about the reality of farm farmlife, and all the struggles people must have working with the cattle that make up their lives. Some of the work is likely done by illegals, but other is done by people who are dedicated, who have a dream, and are living it.

I live next to a horse farm, and my neighboors to the north have a couple of cows and assortment of other livestock. My hat's off to them. I'm not at all bothered by the smell or the sounds of them living their life as they so choose. Farm machinery, four wheelers, snowmobiles, and chainsaws make a lot of noise, but it's a rural noise that we all learn to live with in our day to day life.

It can be obxonious when we smell intensive farming pratices or when the neighboors leave a bunch of plastic trash smoldering for hours. You start to ask your self is such pratices neccessary? Does the neighboor have to spread so much manure on the fields, particularly before you go out? Does economic circumstance demand such rape of the environment? I don't know.

What I do know is I like farms and I like rural life. I like the individualism, and I like those who work to make our country an even greater place. Without farms many of us would be purty hungry, to say nothing of none of those lush green farm fields or the virtue gained through hard work.