Punting on 'second-chance Sunday'

ON FARM: Tyler Fifield looks after a singles' Facebook page for young farm workers. Photo/Stuart Munro

Rural girls like hunting and a hunting trip is a likely first date for young country people, Tyler Fifield says.

He's just 20 and moderates nine Facebook pages for rural people. One of them, NZF Singles, is for young rural folk looking for love.

Girls place 70 per cent of the advertisements on it, and they say nice thoughtful things about themselves. Guys do 60 per cent of the looking, and some are not that smart about what they say about themselves.

For example one said: "I like doing stupid things when I drink Jim Beam". Mr Fifield doesn't think many girls will find that attractive.

The page is dominated by people from the South Island, most of them from sheep and beef farms, and he said they tended to be classier than their North Island counterparts.

"They're more genuine and they write a better ad for themselves and look like a better person to spend time with."

Most of the activity on the page happens on Sunday afternoons, when "everyone is at home and doing nothing". That's when the page has "second-chance Sunday" - for people who have unsuccessfully looked for love on Friday and Saturday nights.

They can post their phone number, location and sex - with no photo - and wait to be called.

It was harder for young rural people to find love, Mr Fifield said. They tended to be isolated, spend a lot of time on their own and might not be as good at interacting with others. Often they were pre-occupied with work. If they used pubs to meet people they had to find a way to get home without driving drunk.

NZF Singles gets 100 to 200 messages a day. Most people using it don't put their contact details up and make arrangements to meet each other outside the page. Mr Fifield started it only a month ago, and it's already too big for him.

He is spending hours on it every day, and has had an offer of more than $5000 for it. But he's put a lot of himself into it and doesn't think he wants to sell.

He wasn't brought up on a farm but has been working on farms since the age of 16. His current job is shepherd general at the Landcorp-owned Glyn Park, near Wanganui. He found his own girlfriend, who lives in Hastings, through a cellphone dating app called Tinder.

Writing has always been his passion, and he started his first Facebook page in March. It's called NZ Farming and his aim was to get young people into farming and reduce the loneliness of isolation.

The singles page happened by chance, because a Southland girl asked him to advertise that she was looking for a partner.

Her post got 500 likes in an hour, where most were getting 20 to 50.

When other people wanted to use the page to find love he started a separate one, dedicated to that.

It's resulted in lots of dates, but he hasn't heard about any long-term relationships.

His other Facebook pages also have a rural slant - they're about contracting, fencing and a buy, sell and swap.