In honor of Valentine's Day: relationship tips for farmers

If you're the punning type, you might also download
these farming valentines from Farmer's Weekly. 

In honor of Valentine's Day, here's a trio of items on romance and marriage on the farm from Successful Farming Family Editor Lisa Foust Prater.

Gary Chapman's popular book "The 5 Love Languages" posits that people tend to express their love for others in five different ways, and that learning your and your partner's love languages can pave the way for greater harmony, Prater reports. She goes over the five love languages—acts of service, gifts, physical touch, quality time, and words of affirmation—what they look like, and how farming couples can best speak to each other in their partner's love language.

In addition to learning your partner's love language, Prater reports, farming couples should learn five broad skills to build a stronger marriage: learn to navigate work conflicts, make it a point to connect with each other, look for the positive in trying situations, learn to talk about money, and fight fair. 

Prater's advice is drawn from the Marriage Matters publication series, a collection of articles from university Extension offices that aims to help couples deal with common relationship issues. (The original link in the article leads to a jumping-off page with mostly dead links, but one of those links, from the University of Georgia, has an excellent, still-working roundup of relevant articles.)

Finally, Prater has a roundup of readers' submissions sharing the most romantic thing their farming partner has ever done. One farmer, for example, brought his wife a cold drink and lunch to the hayfield just to give her a hug and tell her he was proud of all the hard work she was doing. Another farmer cleans his wife's tractor windows every morning during harvest. And one creative farmer celebrated his first Valentine's Day with his wife by hanging a hand-made heart made of baling wire and red silk roses on the side of the barn. Now that's romance!