Farmer Wants a Wife

Caught the last fifteen minutes of CW’s new reality series, “Farmer Wants a Wife,” on Wednesday night – it’s basically “The Bachelor” set in the country. Ten young women compete to become, well, the farmer’s wife. And when I say young, I mean YOUNG -- 21 or 22 years old seemed to be the average -- way too young to get married, especially to some guy on a reality show. The farmer, Matt, is 29, a corn/soybean/wheat farmer in rural Missouri, and a former “Bachelor” applicant, apparently, according to a review by Robert Lloyd of the L.A. Times (http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-et-farmer30apr30,0,6698087.story). According to that review, the show isn’t even filmed at his actual farm because it wasn’t pretty enough for television (so why do they call it “reality” TV??).

I only saw the end of the episode, when each woman had to stand behind a chicken coop with her name on it and root around for an egg under her chicken. The woman whose chicken did not have an egg was eliminated. It was quite weird.

But if I ever do want to move to the country, there are a lot of rural folks out there looking for dates on-line. One site, http://farmersonly.com/, promises to hook you up with “farmers, ranchers, ag students & all of agriculture (I’ve always wanted to date all of agriculture!), horses, livestock owners & all animal lovers, cowboys, cowgirls, rodeo fans & country wannabes.” Then I ”looked for free,” as the site invited me to, and the first few guys who popped up were a 57-year-old from Hayward, California; a 24-year-old from Hawkesbury, Ontario, Canada; a 24-year-old from Iowa City, Iowa; and a 21-year-old (!) from Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. Not exactly my age range!

There’s also Equestrian Singles (http://www.equestriansingles.com) for horse lovers; and http://www.singlescorral.com and http://www.horseandcountrysingles.com for ranchers, farmers, cowboys and cowgirls. Horses are beautiful to look at, but I have to admit they kind of scare me -- I was never one of those girls who went through a 'horse phase.' And anyway, my heart belongs to NYC.