This is the VOA Special
English Agriculture Report.
The Web site FarmersOnly.com calls itself an
online dating and friendship finder. The idea started in the mind of a man in
Ohio. Jerry Miller wondered how farmers could meet new people who understand the
life of a farmer.
Jerry Miller is not a farmer. He works in advertising and public relations.
But he represents a lot of farmers.
As he tells it, the idea for the site was planted when a farmer told him one
day that she was recently divorced and would like to date. But she already knew
everyone who might be a possible dating partner.
And the men she met through dating services did not understand the difference
between city life and rural farm life. Someone would invite her to meet for
coffee at nine o'clock at night, when she had to start her day at five the next
morning.
So, in two thousand five, Jerry Miller launched his Web site. Yet the name is
a little misleading. "You don't have to be a farmer to be on FarmersOnly.com,
but you do have to have the good old-fashioned traditional values of America's
Heartland." That is what it says.
You also have to live in the United States or Canada to be a member of the
site. Some services are free, but a full membership costs fifty dollars for a
year. As of last week the site listed more than fifty-eight thousand members.
Many of them are among the two million farmers in the United States. Others
are students or workers involved in some way with agriculture. Still others are
people who have said goodbye to farm life but would like to return.
Jerry Miller tells us about thirty marriages in the last year have resulted
from his Web site.
Some farmers have also found love through a group based in Illinois. Singles
in Agriculture was formed as a nonprofit organization in 1986. It organizes
gatherings that usually end with a dance, but is not a dating service.
The purpose is to support educational and social activities that offer people
a chance for friendship, travel and activities like camping. Its Web site,
singlesinag.org, says there are more than one thousand members across the nation
and as far away as France.
Someone who says she might try singlesinag.org is a middle-aged woman in the
Midwest named Linda. She raises goats and milk cows in Michigan. Her husband
died several years ago. She wishes that she had more time for a social life, but
says she is not looking to remarry.
And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn
Watson. I'm Steve Ember.
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