Hearts and Plowers

Ron Norris's family eked out a living as sharecroppers in Scotch Ridge, Iowa. They lived simply, decades behind progress, tilling the fields with draft horses and drawing water with a hand pump. On Saturday evenings they'd sit around the battery-powered radio and listen to the tinny strains of Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubbs on "The Old Hay Wagon" show, coming to them all the way from Des Moines.

Norris eventually went to college, became an accountant and moved to Colorado, bringing with him romanticized memories of farm life. And when, a few years ago, he found himself single again, he knew he wanted to find a woman who enjoyed the same modest pleasures that he did. He wanted a woman who liked to ride horses, who liked to hike in the mountains.

He wanted a woman who could polka.

And so Norris surrendered to the entreaties of a friend in Texas who was trying to revive the Colorado chapter of Singles in Agriculture, a group whose aim is "to promote educational, recreational and social opportunities" for unmarried folks with a background in agriculture or agribiz. SIA is designed for lonely farmers and ranchers, former farmers and ranchers, John Deere tractor salesmen and people who share, as one local member puts it, "the overall appeal of the rural lifestyle."

"It's hard for farm and ranch people who live way out to take part in social activities," explains Nancy Hazlett, an SIA member and agriculture appraiser from Fowler. "They're all out scattered through the sticks; it's not like they can go to a hot spot on a Saturday night. We like to go dancing or socialize in a group. I don't know anyone who hangs out at a bar and waits to meet somebody. It's a different thing to be single these days."

And even if they did decide to hang out at what Hazlett reluctantly calls "a meat market," chances are the country folks wouldn't find what they were looking for at some urban honky-tonk. "People who are city folks don't really enjoy us," she says. "I think a lot of our group members want to set and visit about how their farm is going this year. Some people can't relate to that."

"The people in Singles in Agriculture, I guess, are more down-home, genuine people," Norris says. "It sounds bad, but they're not as pretentious as some singles groups. It seemed to me that people I met, you could ask the ladies to go ride in the mountains on the weekend or go do something else, and it wasn't assumed you were in a dating relationship. You were just friends."

SIA, which is based in Pearl City, Illinois, grew out of a letter to the editor of Farm Journal magazine back in 1984. A single farmer wrote in, describing the trouble he was having meeting women interested in rural life. A Journal staffer subsequently wrote several articles on the social life of farm singles, ending the series with an offer to help people get together. Send in your name, address, age and a fifty-word biography, she told them, and she'd compile the list and mail it to everyone who'd written in.

She received close to 3,000 responses.

Two years later, 23 of those people founded Singles in Agriculture, a group that has since expanded to include about 1,600 members and eleven state chapters. The national office publishes a quarterly newsletter and sponsors three national events each year: a convention in February, an anniversary event -- this year's will take place in Colorado Springs June 8-11 -- and a campout in August. At the convention in Lincoln, Nebraska, earlier this year, SIA members toured the Quilt Research Institute and the country's only tractor-testing laboratory.

The state chapters meet monthly, usually for dinner, dancing and a tour. In February, for example, the Illinois chapter held a Valentine's dance and banquet and toured an Alexis fire equipment company. Iowa, with roughly 300 members, is the largest chapter. Colorado now has about 70, after a low of about a half-dozen in the mid-'90s, which is when Norris got involved.

With prodding from his friend, who sits on the SIA board, Norris decided to round up potential members. "I'd been living alone about four years then," Norris says. "They have some kind of social event once a month that usually involves a meal of some kind, and I am partial to eating.

"It just seemed like a fun thing to do, to get to know people around the state, and it was something I could go to on a regular basis. Certainly you can go bowling or to a movie by yourself, but it's not near as much fun as if you go with someone."