Hay In Art: From Wales to Wisdom has some nice pictures, paintings, poems and descriptions of hay. It's interesting to think of the connection people feel (felt) to hay and haymaking and how corporate farming and urban sprawl effect that part of our culture.
Most of us urban dwellers are so far removed from where our food comes from that the idea of growing and harvesting hay to feed cows to produce meat and milk is not even in our consciousness.
In an ideal world everyone would have a chance smell a field of hay, and some freshly-cut hay, at least once. It's not totally unlike the smell of a new-mown lawn (a really big lawn), but it's the context that makes it magical (as you can imagine in the picture above). The smell of hay could be a background to accompany your trip to a nice trout stream, a ride on a horse, a walk on a quiet evening or early morning with the birds calling and the bees buzzing. It smells very sweet.
