Strangely enough, my home town, and the town I’m currently living in, has a reputation for smelling pretty bad. Truthfully, it’s a farming community, so that smell is usually just manure or other organic matter than ultimately yields everyone’s favourite Chilliwack corn or other farming goodness.
I’d be the first to admit that as a kid that smell used to gross me out occasionally. But really, you only can smell it in the summer, and only pretty much in the heart of the growing season. Most of the time in the winter all you smell is that crisp, clean air that comes as a result of being surrounded by snow-capped mountains.
As an adult though, I find that I actually don’t mind the smell at all. Maybe it’s all the years I spent in Vancouver smelling the urine-filled alleys and stairwells, or maybe I’m just conscious of the fact that the smell comes along with living near the outdoors, and a healthy lifestyle. Either way, as I walked out of my little coffee shop at around 10am and was greeted with that smell, I couldn’t help but smile.
Cow photo by John Biehler
I’ve gotten used to the smell too especially in hot days when I was in Pitt Meadows.
Chicken manure is the worst I think, or perhaps rotting brussel sprouts stalks in Abbotsford.
Chicken manure is bad, but even worse is pig. My best friend here in Abbotsford grew up on a hobby farm, and next door was a chicken farm. One year they converted to pigs, and wow!!!
I grew up with the smell of two horses in the field behind my house and the fishing canneries in Steveston. The smell was gross as a kid but now that they are all gone *the house with the horses sold after the horses passed on*. I miss the smell and the heart and history of Steveston.
I’ve gotten use to the smell so much when I head out to Cultus Lake.. I barely notice it.
Most Chilliwack people say that it is the Smell of Money!!!
I like the un-censored title better. 🙂
The smell we smelled when we were there was way more than manureI dont know but that certainly was not the smell of my childhood of cows or chickens or horses. Not even pigs It was like this ungodly dreadful smell It was like a combination of the worst manure ever and a arbetoire Please this totaly put us off retiring there. mb