From the outbox of Meyer’s inbox:
Seriously, this has got to be one of the greatest farm stories ever. A couple of forward thinking farmers have melded speed dating with weed pulling. You meet a single person, pull some weeds for seven minutes then move on to meet the next person. Brilliant. I’m tempted to fly out there for some field research!
WEED DATING: SPEED DATING FOR SINGLES MOVES TO THE FARM FIELDS by Melissa Pasanen
TUNBRIDGE — Ben Wolfe was a little nervous, he admitted, as he stood waiting 
last Sunday afternoon at Tunbridge Hill Farm for the start of the inaugural singles event hosted by the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont.
The 35-year-old North Tunbridge resident was reassured, though, by the fact that the “weed dating” event was about more than just singles checking each other out.
In this Vermont-born spin on speed dating, participants would meet in pairs for timed periods of seven minutes before moving on to their next pairing. However, these brief encounters would not take place across a table in a dark bar or restaurant, as speed dating typically does, but instead across a row of leeks, which they would weed as they chatted.
“It’d be really neat to meet a woman here,” Wolfe said. “But I’m not pressuring myself. I’m just thinking that you get to meet people while you help out a local farm, weeding. It says something about people that they’d like to do something like this. It’s not like a movie. It’s more interactive.”
The “speed dating meets crop mob” idea was the brainchild of Jean and Wendy Palthey, who have farmed in Tunbridge for 18 years.
“We have this one young guy who works for us,” Jean Palthey explained, “and he’s single and lives in Chelsea, and we were joking around that there are not a lot of young, single people around here, so we came up with this idea.” Unfortunately, their employee was having car trouble the day of the inaugural event and couldn’t make it.
The nine participants who did make it — and paid $10 (or $15 for non-NOFA-VT-members) for the privilege of meeting and weeding — trekked from as far away as western Massachusetts and from various towns in Vermont, including Brattleboro and Orwell. They ranged in age from their early 20s to 50. Each weeder wore a name tag with just his or her first name and the name of their favorite fruit or vegetable, which became their weed-dating surname.
Dig up the rest of this story here.
