Singles in Agriculture

By Devon Immelt

dimmelt@delgazette.com

In today’s fast-paced soci­ety, being “sin­gle and look­ing” can be a chal­lenge. That chal­lenge is often dou­bly so for farm­ers who fre­quently work long, phys­i­cally hard days and live in rural areas where oppor­tu­ni­ties and venues for social activ­i­ties are few and far between.

So what’s a sin­gle farmer to do? For some, find­ing that spe­cial some­one has come in the form of Sin­gles In Agri­cul­ture, a group that works to pro­mote recre­ational and social oppor­tu­ni­ties for sin­gles who have an agri­cul­tural back­ground or an inter­est in agriculture.

The idea behind the group, which now boasts 11 chap­ters in 24 states across the U.S., appealed to Dar­lene Foos, who lost her first hus­band to can­cer in 1986 and was left try­ing to man­age an 186-acre farm in Galion, Ohio.

“I had a good mar­riage and hope to get mar­ried again, but meet­ing peo­ple with sim­i­lar inter­ests who under­stood the farm­ing lifestyle wasn’t easy,” Foos said. “It seems like a lot of farm peo­ple just stay home.” Two years later, in 1988, Foos learned about Sin­gles in Agri­cul­ture (SIA) through a farm jour­nal. She made con­tact with the orga­ni­za­tion and soon found her­self par­tic­i­pat­ing in SIA events. The group orga­nizes inex­pen­sive group activ­i­ties for its mem­bers, includ­ing tours, dances and edu­ca­tional week­end outings.

Foos met Dan while attend­ing an SIA-organized sin­gles dance in Mar­ion County, Ohio. The two hit it off, as they say, and mar­ried after a courtship that included numer­ous SIA activ­i­ties. Although no longer sin­gle, the Foos remain involved with Sin­gles in Action — the cou­ple cur­rently serve as the co-presidents of the organization’s Ohio chap­ter. Dan Foos also serves as the group’s treasurer.

“For us, it’s more of a social group now, but most of the mem­bers are sin­gle. Some are there to find their soul mate, oth­ers are there for com­pan­ion­ship and to travel,” Dar­lene Foos said.

And the Foos’ are far from the only suc­cess story com­ing out of SIA.

Robert Hall grew up on a dairy farm out­side of Lima, Ohio and lived there most of his adult life. Like Dar­lene Foos, Hall said he strug­gled to find avail­able women who were famil­iar with and enjoyed the farm­ing lifestyle — traits he hoped to find in a prospec­tive future wife.

He first heard about SIA in 1995 when he read a news­pa­per arti­cle pro­mot­ing an upcom­ing event orga­nized by the Ohio chap­ter. Hall then began attend­ing SIA activ­i­ties reg­u­larly, he said.

But it wasn’t until he started going to the organization’s national activ­i­ties, where sin­gle farm­ers meet with other sin­gle farm­ers from out of state, that he met Sandy, the women he would even­tu­ally marry.

“We had quite a few things in com­mon and after that I vis­ited her in Iowa prob­a­bly once a month for sev­eral months,” Hall said.

Ulti­mately, Hall decided to pick up roots and relo­cate to be with Sandy, who he has since mar­ried. The two cur­rently live in South Dakota near Sandy’s fam­ily farm, where they are build­ing their first house together.

With­out a group like Sin­gles in Agri­cul­ture, Hall said, as a farmer, he would have strug­gled to find a sig­nif­i­cant other.

“It’s a dif­fer­ent lifestyle and the weather and sea­sons have a larger impact on your life. You don’t see as many peo­ple, … you’re a lit­tle bit iso­lated from other peo­ple,” he said

Sin­gles in Agri­cul­ture was formed in the mid-1980s after a sin­gle farmer sent a let­ter to a farm­ing mag­a­zine express­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of meet­ing sin­gle women inter­ested in a rural lifestyle. His let­ter prompted a writer from the mag­a­zine to write a series of arti­cles on the social lives of sin­gle farm­ers. The arti­cles became a pop­u­lar read and a col­umn ask­ing sin­gle farm­ers to sub­mit bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion to the mag­a­zine resulted in more than 2,700 responses, accord­ing to SIA’s website.

The magazine’s work caught the eye of an Iowa woman who ulti­mately helped to estab­lish Sin­gles in Agri­cul­ture as a national orga­ni­za­tion. “Iowan Mar­cella Spindler vol­un­teered to han­dle cor­re­spon­dence from those inter­ested in form­ing a sin­gles orga­ni­za­tion. By the sum­mer of 1986, the project had gen­er­ated so much inter­est that 23 peo­ple met in Peo­ria, IL. to take the nec­es­sary steps to make SIA an offi­cial orga­ni­za­tion,” the web­site states.

In Octo­ber of that same year, Sin­gles in Agri­cul­ture was char­tered as a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion. The nation­wide orga­ni­za­tion boasts mem­bers in 41 states. Ohio’s chap­ter is one of the smaller ones. It cur­rently has about 30 active members.

What sep­a­rates SIA from a dat­ing ser­vice is the fact that every­one involved has, or is inter­ested in, an agri­cul­tural lifestyle, Hall said. There is no pres­sure to date while par­tic­i­pat­ing in the social activ­i­ties, it’s about meet­ing peo­ple, see­ing new places and hav­ing fun, he said.

“I would say, if you’re inter­ested, go and see what it’s about. Check out the activ­i­ties and see if there’s some­thing you might like,” Hall said.

“Stay active,” Foos added. “There is some­one out there fo ryou. It’s just about being at the right place at the right time and know­ing that your not going to find them sit­ting at home.”

For more infor­ma­tion visit www.singlesinagriculture.org.

Posted by Rob Treynor on Nov 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.