Pine Nuts with McAvoy Lane: A short history of farmers only online dating
Farmers have always been the world's busiest, hardest-working people. Farmers are perhaps the only people whose profession commands universal respect. Between milking the cows in the morning and getting that milk to market, and collecting the eggs at day's end and getting those eggs to market, who has time to date?
So, traditionally, over the centuries, farmers turning 18 years of age fell in love with the first person of the opposite sex they came into contact with, or maybe the same sex, and va-va-voom! This casual meeting oftentimes ended up in a wedding, sometimes a shotgun marriage, but you're too young to even know what a shotgun marriage is.
Anyways, if you were raised on a farm, well, that was credentials enough to define you as a person of sterling character and exceptional morals. A person raised on a farm was a child of the Earth, the very salt of the Earth, a person to get things done. But then again, there was little or no time for dating.
Then, in the 21st century, along came the internet and, "Farmers Only Online Dating." One can only imagine how that first conversation might have gone.
"Name's 'Boon,' yours?"
"Naomi."
"You do alfalfa?"
"Beans…kidney mostly."
"Hunt?"
"Ruger, Bolt Action."
"Fish?"
"Fly…Wooly Buggers mostly."
"Answer me this and I might ask you to marry me … you know that bottle of pear brandy with the real pear inside the bottle?"
"Yeah,"
"Well then, how'd they get that pear inside that bottle?"
"Simple. You take your empty bottle and you duck tape your empty bottle to a pear tree. Then you stick a pear bud up inside your bottle and you check on it every now & again to make sure a storm hasn't wiggled that pear bud outta there, and sure enough, at the end of that growing season, you got yourself a pear in a bottle. Then all you gotta do is to pour some brandy in your bottle. But now let me ask you a question before we go waltzing off to go and get married,"
"Fire away."
"What does a smart farmer do with an over-supply of dent corn? And I'll even give you a hint…'lend me your ear.'"
"Oh, shucks, Naomi, that's so gull-darn easy, that smart farmer could burn it, eat it for dinner, or…feed it to the livestock, that's exactly what I would do with it, feed it to the chickens."
"You are a smart farmer, Boon, so when's the first Saturday you got open?"
"Next Saturday I've got a 4-H meeting in the morning, but how does your afternoon look?"
"Well I've got a foal due about then, but we could have the ceremony in the barn."
"Suits me, I'll bring a bucket with some warm water."
"We've got a date Mr. Boon…what's your last name anyways?"
"Bzjxxllwcp."
"Oh, I'm sorry, we lost the connection…darn."
And this is where our short history of Farmers Only Online Dating comes to a close.
— For more than 30 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”