Sunday night humor from Marston, Maryland

The smell. Skip Roach can't stand it on days when the temperature nears 90 degrees and a neighboring farm has spread a commercial fertilizer substitute on a field. The rotting stench is suffocating, he says.

He shuts his windows, but without air conditioning, the heat is too much.

Sometimes, on days when the smell is simply unbearable, he leaves home and stays with relatives.

A farmer himself, Roach said he knows that agricultural practices don't always make farmers the most popular neighbors. He knows about the smells, the noises and the plodding tractors that stall traffic.

But Roach said he and his neighbors in Marston are enduring odors far worse than what should be expected from normal farming operations. And after months of complaints from various neighbors to county and state officials, an area resident has requested a Right to Farm hearing where both sides can lay it all out on the table.

Wait for it.......

Phil and Victoria Snader, owners of Enviro-Organic Technologies, which has its base farm in the 2300 block of Marston Road, see themselves as owning an innovative and green business.

Enviro-Organic Technologies is paid to take natural resources that need to be disposed of from other agriculture-related businesses, such as spice residue from McCormick, residue from slaughterhouses and silt from water treatment plants, Snader said. They then provide this nutrient-rich material to farmers for free as an alternative fertilizer.

And people say our hog farms in North Carolina stink? Nothing like one of these freaky deaky enviro farms to bring on the "dirty diaper" smell. The folks in Marston have even created a website, www.stopthestinknow.com.