Summer Loving: Farmers Talk Rural Romancing

André Barcellos Hund, 29

I was backpacking in New Zealand and ended up at the same hostel as Megan [then Davidson, now Hund]. We both wanted to see the rest of the country, so I bought a car and we hit the road together.

While we were at a music festival in Wellington we had all our belongings stolen out of our car, so we needed to find work that paid well right away. I found a job online for apple-pickers, and we rented a tiny trailer in the orchard and ended up living and working there for three months.

‘When love overcomes the smell of leeks … you can be sure that it’s love.’

After she’d been harvesting shallots all day, her blue eyes looked so beautiful in contrast to the black dirt on her face. I guess it was true love.

At first, I was proud of my hardcore girlfriend [now wife]. I don’t think many couples have the chance to experience that and really get to know how their partner will react in a tough situation or after long days of hard work. That made us respect and value each other more. When love overcomes the smell of leeks … you can be sure that it’s love.

Shaena Harris, 26

I grew up in a pretty rural part of northeast Ohio, right on the border of Amish country, on a little family farm surrounded by other farms. There was no getting away with anything in this house; there weren’t even doors in most of the doorways.

My high-school sweetheart and I had dated all through high school and where were we going to go except the cornfield?

‘My high-school sweetheart and I had dated all through high school and where were we going to go except the cornfield?’

He had this old beater truck, and we took the truck to this perfect place, a neighboring farm. We started to pull in and realized it was really muddy because it had been raining for a week. We pulled really far into the field before we realized we eventually couldn’t move at all.

The truck was a lost cause. We just had to buck up and accept the fact that not only were we not gonna make out but also [would need] to get help getting out of this field. We walked down the road to the farmer’s house and had to explain that we were stuck in the middle of his cornfield. He grumpily went and got his tractor. In the time it took us to get back home, he had already called my parents.

My parents, they were farm parents. And my mom very sternly asked me what we were doing in the field in the middle of the night. The best thing I could tell her was we were telling ghost stories.

These interviews have been edited and condensed, and some names have been changed.