I was starting to wonder if I was* coming down with something – scratchy throat, itchy eyes, runny nose and sneezes. With the cold damp weather, I was expecting the worse. ..but symptoms were intermittent. Oddly, I have worked out that with not a blade of grass in sight and snow covering the ground, I am suffering from hay fever….what's a tasty snack for the girls, is as irritating to me now as in the height of summer.
We're supplementing diets with grass from last year in its various forms. In the past I have called everything grass-like "straw", but that's just townie-speak and I should be ashamed to be so generic nowadays. Hay is lovely aromatic (and allergenic) dried grass (the cows love to eat it), silage is damp grass and much much more 'aromatic' (cows also love to eat it), while straw is dried stalks of wheat or barley (cows sleep on this, but also appear to love to eat it, especially while they are laying on their dinner). Each bale of hay or silage smells different, depending on which field it has come from and what other flora is within. Today I had hay that definitely smelt like fenugreek and cardamom – neither of which grow round here (obviously) – but nevertheless, smell wonderful it did.
Talking of aromas, after a while you stop noticing smells that originally were quite, shall we say, dominant. Ian and I were in the farm store the other day and I leant towards him and whispered that someone in the queue smelled like cow poo. He whispered back that it was me, and I had ponged of it all day because I had it on my boots, trousers and jacket. I guess I won't be invited to tea at the Palace any time soon.
* My grammatical OCD has kicked in and I am suffering ... because this should be subjunctive 'were' but it just sounds wrong nowadays. I think I need help.
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