Fifty Chickens in an Hour

My sister Mary and her husband Donald celebrated their fifteenth anniversary this past July. I asked Mary and Donald what was the main attraction for each of them.

Donald said without hesitation, “Mary had 50 pounds of whole wheat flour, five gallon bins filled with grains and beans, gallon jugs of soy sauce, nut butters, and oils in her kitchen. I had been buying my food in bulk for years as I lived in the mountains. I knew that this was the girl that I wanted to marry.’

“ I had a catering business and made food for festivals, “ Mary explained. “I liked Donald because he enjoyed eating as much as I did.”

“Another reason I liked Mary, is because she is a Minnesota farm girl and she is not afraid of hard work,” said Donald.

“Not afraid of hard work,” I mused. “I have been working since I was five; milking cows, planting and weeding gardens, cutting wood, butchering, cooking, and cleaning.”

I married at age 19 and was married for 30 years. I raised six children on a farm in Minnesota. Then in 2006, after 30 years and 22 of those years being unhappily married, I became happily divorced. My girlfriends told me that I should try Internet dating.

Carli had been Internet dating for over ten years and said it was fun and safe.

“There are a lot of single men out there waiting to date you, Sheila,” Carli said.

The first Internet dating site I signed up for was on Yahoo. I created a profile, didn’t mention my six children, wrote that I was a newspaper reporter, (which was true) and that I liked to read, dance and practiced yoga daily. I posted my profile and started surfing the site. There were a lot of single men.

I decided to narrow my search and seek out building contractors as my ex and I were going to build a new house, but my ex‘s new house had become the local bar.

My first date was with a contractor named Denny from Kensett, Iowa. Denny didn’t get a second date because he called me up drunk, slurring, “I love you, Sheila.”

“Don’t ever call me again,’’ I said as I hung up the phone.

Okay, no more contractors.

I narrowed my search to men that stated that their income was over $100,000. I went out with an electrical engineer, a couple men who played the stock market, a computer technician, an auctioneer, and a mold inspector. Most of them did not make $100, 000 a year, but had $100,000 or more in assets.

I began to understand the game of dating.

I had not dated much before I married and was having fun. I would meet one date for breakfast, another for coffee in the afternoon, and a third for dinner. I had a hard time remembering the details of each date’s profile. But I was a good listener and nodded and laughed. I was making up for lost time. Twice I became bored hearing about past relationships and said, “Let’s not talk. I would rather go out to your car and make out.” Both times the men quickly escorted me to their cars.

After three months of world wind dating, I got off the dating sites, as I had to take a second job. I had been working part time as a newspaper reporter for six years and written a column about my farm and family. Now that I was single, I was not ready to share my life openly in a town where women were often judged by the profession of their husbands. I needed to start anew.

I could not get a full time job and a friend offered me to move to Las Vegas, as there were many jobs there. I moved to Las Vegas with my teenage son, got a full time job in retail and worked part time as a substitute teacher.

I decided to try Internet dating after I had been off the sites for a year.

I noticed that people in Las Vegas were impressed with my farming background. I decided to emphasize this in my profile for the dating site, farmersonly.com.

Here is a sampling of my profile: “I am a Minnesota farm girl. I can butcher, pluck and process 50 chickens in an hour using an automatic chicken plucker. The feathers were flying! I am good with a shovel, a hoe and am looking for a man who is a great kisser.”

If the chicken feathers were flying, the emails came flying in even faster. I received emails from 30 states from farmers, homesteaders and those that worked in the agricultural industry. I got an offer to be flown to Montana to help a man with his poultry business. Another offer came from a farmer in Oklahoma who came to Las Vegas for the winter and wanted to come and wine and dine me. I was sent photos of gardens, pumpkin patches, sheep, chickens, horses, tractors, llamas and cattle. I was flattered, with all the emails but became confused as to who sent which email.
”No, I am not the one who sent you a photo with a view of a farm from a mountain,” was one message I received.

I went off the dating site when my one-month subscription expired. I was working too much and decided to move to Humboldt County to be near family and have my son attend a smaller school. It has now been 7 months since my move. I have been proposed to twice since I moved here. One of the proposals came from a man named Rolf whom I met in the meat department at Ray’s Food Place in McKinleyville. I mentioned that I knew how to butcher chickens. Rolf said that he had four hens he wanted butchered as they were eating his eggs. We set up a time to butcher his chickens, but he called the morning of the date and said that a raccoon had eaten the chickens the night before, but did I want to help him butcher a goat?

I declined on the goat.
”Well, you are just what I am looking for in a wife,” said Rolf. “I want a woman who is as capable as you are.”

“Go to Minnesota,” I said. “There are more like me there. We Minnesota women are not afraid of hard work.”