Singles Group Helps Ease Loneliness of Life on Farm

Frank Cook, a divorced farmer, had little time left to find a date after he tended to his cows, hogs, crops and children.

So he joined the more than 600 farmers, agricultural workers and others who meet new friends and lovers through Singles in Agriculture, a nonprofit group based in Wisconsin.

“Farm people are special people. They’re busy and they don’t have time to go to things,” Cook, 52, said in a telephone interview. “It’s hard to find someone when you’re on the farm.”

Cook, who runs a 1,000-acre dairy, hog, corn and soybean farm in Baraboo, became vice president of Singles in Agriculture.

The group organizes outings, such as a camping trip in Missouri or a boat trip in the Wisconsin Dells, and keeps a registry of single people with rural backgrounds.

It does not emphasize matchmaking, but some members who met through group activities have married each other, said Marcella Gahm, 49, the group’s president.

She met Marlyn Gahm, a 53-year-old cattleman from Pearl City, Ill., through the group, and they were married last June.

Widowed in the Country

After her first husband died on their Staceyville, Iowa, farm in 1979, Gahm said she was like many farm widows who find themselves in an area without many single people their age.

Most of her friends were married. They invited her to dinners or dances, but she said she felt like “the odd one out.”

She became a founding member of Singles in Agriculture when 23 farmers who had written one another through a farm magazine got together in Peoria, Ill., in June, 1986.

Membership is limited to people who work in agriculture, have farmed in the past or grew up on a farm. The group includes people who have lost farms because of financial difficulties and and now have other jobs, as well as secretaries who grew up on farms, Gahm said.

Farmers need people who understand rural life in order for a relationship to work, she said.

Dates May Fall Through

“I think the (agriculture) person needs someone who is more willing to give than anyone can imagine,” she said. “You can have a date all set, and if something happens with the livestock or the weather changes, you have to cancel it.”

A forecast of rain may mean having to stay home and bale hay instead of going to a movie, she said.

The members’ ages range from the early 20s to 77, Gahm said.