Does Winter Smell?

Here in England and in Spain, Australia, Arizona and a few other spots that I've lived, winter is something of an antiseptic time. It can be beautiful and certainly you sleep more but generally it doesn't smell. The one outstanding exception I can think of in these prosperous countries is the sheep that Farmer Edwards brings in to feed-up in the fields around our place beginning in October and November, a season that lasts right through to the beginning of summer.

Apparently Farmer Edwards has a deal with other sheep farmers whereby he takes them when they reach a certain state of maturity and he then fattens them up, they are then trucked off in the dead of early morning and we don't see them again (well, maybe we do but not so you'd recognise; very difficult that, recognising a specific sheep from only the forensic evidence; actually I never think to look until there's only bones left and frequently I've been known to give those to the dog).

But, I digress. Farmer Edwards supplements his income by providing his sheep some homegrown fare, viz mangel-wurzel. As an American this is something with which I was not familiar apart from the occasional literary reference (P.G. Wodehouse mentions them somewhere and I was taken with the name). Now, I have a country place where, whenever I wish, I can look out my window across a field of mangel-wurzel.

According to the OED mangel-wurzel is a beet or potato-like thing, which is fed to cattle. This now worries me because I'm pretty sure that those are sheep that Farmer Edwards is feeding the mangel-wurzel to. If I cared enough the following questions would keep me awake: Why is Farmer Edwards feeding mangel-wurzel to his sheep when the OED distinctly says that the crop is a cattle-feed? Why are the sheep eating the mangel-wurzel when, as noted, it's for cattle? And, am I asking these questions just so that I can write 'mangel-wurzel' several times more? There's even a health question buried somewhere amongst all this: It is healthy for sheep to be eating cattle-feed? Finally, could I be wrong and could Farmer Edwards and other so-called 'sheep' farmers actually be feeding the mangel-wurzel to some mutant sheep-cow combination that they are preparing to spring on the world? If the latter is so, I've afraid the secret is out, Farmer Edwards and his co-conspirators will soon come to realise that they can't pull the 'weather' (combination of wool + leather arising from mixing the breeds) over our eyes!

But, I digress, I think. If I wanted I could scroll up to the beginning of this piece and re-establish what it is that I originally wanted to write about but that would destroy the spontaneity. If I recall correctly (or incorrectly, who gives a damn?), I wanted to write about smelly winters. Around here if the wind isn't very active, there is a concentrated odour that does float down off of Farmer Edwards' mangel-wurzel field where hundreds of sheep are nibbling away. The mangel-wurzel appears to be quite nourishing, the sheep are plump and 'baa' quite contentedly. Though it could well be a dastardly plot to feed sheep cow food, or something even more sinister, the mangel-wurzel has not appeared to do the sheep any harm.

There is an unintended impact on the environment that makes our country life even more authentic than the mud we bring back on our shoes after traipsing across the seven acre field with the dog: the combination of a rich field of mangel-wurzel and several hundred hungry sheep creates a smell you can actually see, it just wafts gently down the slope (it is richer, more character-ful and heavier than air). I've stepped out and taken a big breath on a frosty, still morning that is absolutely redolent with the countryside. No wussy city smells for me, no sir, give me the acrid fumes of sheep-digested mangle-wurzel any day; that'll make a man of you.

But, of course, I digress, for what I wanted to write about was the very noticeable seasonal smells that permeate the winter in Delhi and the Gangetic Plain of India: potatoes and coal! I wanted to comment on the distinctive odours of December and January in small Anatolian villages: wood fires and roasting meat. And, I had dredged up the smell of fresh tortillas and beans in the Mexico of my childhood. All of these are signatures of place as surely as photos or histories and the nose is a great memory. I am grateful to Farmer Edwards for feeding his sheep the mangel-wurzel because he has given me another memory, something increasingly scarce in a world where we are either given the universal odour of uncombusted hydrocarbons in urban air or the artificial sterility of prosperous, gated suburban communities without defining characteristics.