Homebuyers beware: Farms will fill the senses (ROFL ---- DUH Alert)

St. Cloud Times ^ | 12/22/03 | Kirsti Marohn

[coder2]

Someday, prospective Stearns County rural homeowners may get a scratch-and-sniff lesson on farm life.

For now, Stearns will use a brochure to inform people thinking about building a home in a rural area about the sights, sounds and odors associated with farming.

[SierraWasp]

Hay farmfriend! What say you? Pungent Ping!!!

[EagleMamaMT]

Read later.

[William Terrell]

I see a cowpie as the poisons the Good Lord removed from the meat I'm going to eat.

[EagleMamaMT]

Mmmm...just-cut alfalfa hay, just-tilled soil and honeysuckle. I wish I could buy a perfume that smelled like that! When I was a kid, I used to hurry out to the field when Daddy was plowing, first thing in the spring, just to stand there and drink in the wonderful smell of freshly-turned dirt.

[Jim Cane]

I see a cowpie as the poisons the Good Lord removed from the meat I'm going to eat.

Now I see cowpie as the future "character" that gives silver queen corn on the cob it's distinctive flavour.

[EagleMamaMT]

Your post is right on the money! I know several farmers and ranchers in other states who have had problems with city folks moving out to the country and then being upset with the smells and sounds of rural life. The city folks are also bad about not respecting the farmers' property - trespassing at will, etc.

Here in Southwestern Missouri, where I live, we don't see much of that, though. We live 100+ miles from Kansas City, 80 miles from Joplin and 75 miles from Springfield. There aren't many jobs (and certainly no big-city amenities) around here, so people that move to this area pretty much come here to ranch or farm or are country people anyway and fit right in with the local folks.

This is a beautiful area - rolling hills, big oaks and lousy with wild game. Mostly it's ranching country. It's a great place to live and bring up kids. In a lot of ways, it's like stepping back in time to the 50s or 60s when you move here. We have a good public school system (too far from the big cities for the liberal teachers to move here), lots of churches, lots of mom-and-pop stores and just a friendly small-town atmosphere.

[Indrid Cold]

Stearns County, MN is home to "Stearns County Syndrome", a real effect that's been studied and widely reported on in scientific journals. As I heard it when I lived there, people tend to stay and reproduce in the same small towns where they grew up, so the gene pool gets really small. Natives of Stearns County are NOT amused when you try to discuss the Syndrome. They do know what cow poop smells like, though.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[rintense]

Not really subsidies. I guess I'm more of a romantic traditionalist. I thought people farmed because they loved working on the land and took pride in providing food to Americans. Guess those ideals are a thing of the past.

[RippleFire]

bump

[B Knotts]

Are people today so dumb that they need a "scratch & sniff cowpie" to know that rural areas have their own particular aroma ???

Um. Yes.

[ridesthemiles]

The county I live in has a "Right To Farm" ordinance. It has been in place for many years, but recently-6-7 yrs ago, it became mandatory for real estate agents and brokers to give notice of same to prospective buyers.
It clearly states that there are a number of diverse farming operations in the county and basically, they were here first and have the right to be here. If you want to build or buy near one, you will only be making noise that not many will respond to if you start to bitch after coming into the area.
I have horses and dogs. I have had a couple of city slickers comment on the noise, etc. of my operation and others and I tell them outright that I could be raising pigs or turkeys. If they think those 2 commodities are less noisy or less smelly, they need to rethink their information.
The look on their faces when I mention pigs is utterly priceless.
Horses don't like pigs, so I wouldn't do it, but I can still verbalize it.....

[ridesthemiles]

I've often wondered about the viability of building a home on formerly cultivated land--the pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and so on that build up in the soil.

You probably have the same thing whereever you are now. Some sort of farming has been done thruout the entire USA in the last 300 years. Not all fertilizers come in a bag from DuPont....
While you worry about a potential future move to a rural area, are you EQUALLY worried about the source of the vegetables you are buying everyday in the market? Stuff grown outside the USA doesn't have ANY of the restrictions the growers have here in the USA.

[ridesthemiles]

And when they die, these farms are sold so fast you get whiplash.

I maintain if the DEAT TAX were abolished once and for all, this sale would not occur.
The IRS and others come in on an estate, and declare an obscene value for the property. Then the IRS wants 50% of that value. The heirs are almost always forced to sell the farm to pay the death taxes.

[iowafarmboy]

Land for land; acre for acre; There is more chemical, herbicide, and pesticide use in a suburban residential area than in my corn field. Especially if the "Lawn and Garden" companies apply it for you.