On rural matchmaking--online--in Iowa

The Des Moines Register ran this feature today on rural matchmaking via the FarmersOnly.com website.  The headline is "These Iowans met on Farmers Only. But finding love in rural America is harder than a swipe."

I love this description of farm living from Katie Vaske, one half of the couple featured in the story, who live in Manchester, Iowa, population 5,179.

For much of her adulthood, Katie wasn’t sure she would find anyone who understood the particularities of rural existence. The idea that when you work in agriculture, every hour is a business hour. Or that when you have animals, your life revolves around feedings. 

Or that farmers are rarely bogged down by the boredom or malaise felt by their cubicle counterparts because, really, this is so much more than a job.

Courtney Crowder's story includes this quantitative data about what is going on and people's attitudes about their marital (or, at least, long-term relationship) prospects:

Take heed, though, because pastoral love does exist. In rural Iowa, 26 percent of men and 18 percent of women have never married, compared with 28 percent of men in the rest of rural America and 22 percent of women, according to Census data.

Hope for love exists, too. In a July 2017 Iowa Poll, more than 75 percent of rural respondents said they believed their ability to find or keep a life partner would get better in the next year.