We'd love to live rural, but no apartments are built in rural areas and we sure can't afford to buy a house. A house on horse property would be nice, but that just isn't going to happen. So, we have to depend on rodeos and fairs to get our "smell" of livestock/horses. Actually, my wife told me that her older sister asked her "are you really moving next year" and my wife replied "yes". Older sister don't want us to, as the old saying goes "that's tuff, going to anyway". If we moved into an apartment complex right next to where older sister lives, she would absolutely love it, however, my wife tells me "no way".
I grew up with a 4H Fairgrounds as my back yard. When I drive through the country, the smells that cause others to hold their noses makes me roll my windows down. Now I live in farm country, and it's been tainted by the sewage treatment plants that pay farmers and other landowners to have solid human waste residue spread as fertilizer. It's only done once a year (thank goodness.) There are times when the wind blows juuust right...
There are two rural smells that are totally disgusting... a commercial chicken house and a hog pen. You definitely don't want to be near those when the wind changes.
You could almost publish that in Reader's Digest as a short story or flesh it out into a book as time goes on! There was a comedy show on tv a while back Where a couple moved to Nebraska to start farming and raising chickens but the soft hearted wife could not bring herself to kill any of them to sell. She even hid them in the house to keep the farmer neighbors from finding out. From experience--Don't do that!
We stayed at an RV park in Texas once that had a feed lot or something next door. It wasn't bad at first but the wind shifted and man, was that terrible. It actually made my eyes water. The guy at the office told me it was the "smell of money". Sometimes being poor isn't so bad, after all.....
Where I live the whole area was underground and above ground copper mining ( the mining finished over 100 years ago ) , if you go to a town some 20+ km from where I live you can still smell the chemicals used in the smelter works even tho it’s been covered with 1000’s tons of dirt which is being sold off for housing blocks of land cause it’s very prime land overlooking the sea ….. We call it ….Walla … smelly…. Roo … proper name Wallaroo