I grew up on a Missouri farm. No blacktop roads for five miles or so, growing up. My "playground" was a 240 acre farm, with hog lots (pigs had free run of that lot, even) and cow pastures surrounding the place.
Row-crop fields in the creek bottoms, the only flat spots, really. I ran up and down the bean and cornrows, ran barefoot thru cowcrap, and was all over the 10 acre hoglot north of the house.
Never been allergic to anything that I know of.
My uncle, UP the road two miles, had a dairy farm, cow crap everywhere, and my other uncle, two miles DOWN the road, had several hog lots, too. I liked the hog lots best, the pigs kept the weeds and brush knocked down, so we could run wild.
Kept me out of trouble, though. I ran around with a .22 rifle practically permanently attached to my arm. I'm sure the neighbors thought it was attached......
