On paper, dating a farmer sounds perfect. Who can refuse someone who loves animals and the outdoors? But don’t let your eyes deceive you, says Dixe Wills, as all is not what it seems...
1. If The Archers is to be believed, farmers rise at 4am every morning, even when there’s a crucial village cricket match to play in the afternoon or a plot twist to discuss over a cup of tea/stiff gin. One must assume therefore that early nights are pretty much a constant feature. Thus, if you enjoy dates that go on beyond 8.30pm, you might like to look elsewhere.
2. Good luck arranging to go away on holiday together. Farmers are forever sowing or reaping or spraying or sending cows, sheep, pigs, chickens or whatever else they can lay their hands on to the slaughterhouse. And when they’re not doing that, they’re filling out forms. It’s a busy life. Still, you can always go by yourself.
3. Farmers love machines. Balers, seed drills, anything that comes on a massive trailer. Are you a machine? Can you milk 20 cows simultaneously? If not, you’re likely to come a distant second in their affections.
4. How much do you like weather? Or rather how much do you like talking about weather? Farmers, it’s safe to say, are obsessed with the subject – it’s almost as if their livelihoods depended on it. And with the climate crisis delivering ever more frequent extreme weather events, their intimate knowledge of isobars, occluded fronts and the Beaufort Scale is only going to become more natter-worthy. So, unless you happen to work at the Met Office, you might find rain stops play.
5. Second to weather as a topic of conversation, farmers love talking about land. Their land specifically. Or land they’d acquire if only life had not dealt them such an unfair hand. And not only the number of acres of land (or, if they’re terrifically modern, hectares) but also its composition, health, drainage, pH value etc etc – where there’s muck there’s not only brass but a whole heap of chat too. If land to you is merely the last four letters of bland, you should probably pass.
6. Due to the amount of time farmers have to spend on their farms, they can end up smelling ‘farmy’. Though quite natural, it is not a scent that is likely to be bottled and sold by perfumers anytime soon.
7. As soot is to the chimney sweep, so mud is to the farmer (see ‘Land, talking about’ above). Mud is a crafty medium: it gets everywhere, invades every crevice, every nook and every cranny. It resists all efforts to tame it. One day it will take over the world. But for now, don’t be surprised if it appears content simply to cake the farmer’s Land Rover, trousers and hoodie, and take up permanent residence under all 10 fingernails.
8. Most farmers come from families who can trace their yeoman heritage back to Alfred the Great. Any dilution of the bloodline can put at risk their membership of the Young Farmers’ Club. That fo’ shizzle ain’t gonna happen, as the kids used to say.
9. The chances of you being involved in a shotgun wedding are dramatically enhanced by the fact that farmers – and crucially their parents – have access to plenty of shotguns.
10. Overalls. And if not overalls, then dungarees.
