Farmers, lock up your daughters. At least don’t let them meet strange men in a zucchini patch.

In the latest sign that the apocalypse is upon us, “weed dating” is all the rage. According to the AP, a farm in Idaho is offering “an unconventional form of speed dating.” For the mercifully uninformed, speed dating is a matchmaking system where a mix of candidates are thrown together for a few minutes to see if romance or just plain lust can be sparked. A group of people might use a restaurant setting for a speed dating event. For three or four minutes, individuals are paired off to talk until the clock runs out. Then a bell rings, or a whistle blows, or someone fires off a .45, and everyone gets a new partner and starts again. It’s a bit like a lusty round-robin affair where everyone pretends to be interested in “conversation.”

Speed dating offers an opportunity to meet all sorts of romance candidates: men, women, mental patients, stalkers, former inmates, Charlie Manson devotees, even some straight-out sickos.

It’s every American’s dream: The opportunity to tell your life story to a total stranger in less than three minutes.

Anyhow, back to Idaho. Earthly Delights Farm has changed speed dating to weed dating. Instead of a table at a restaurant, each lady is assigned a crop row to tend. A different man shows up every three to four minutes, and then together, they weed the crops while hoping something clicks. In the thick of an eggplant patch or a fertile field of taters, the heart might be stirred; or at least the loins.

The Idaho event is no exception, with weed dating events popping up in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio. “… this is just beautiful, because it’s like outside, it’s very organic,” waxes one of the nuts, sorry, I meant participants. And more eloquence from another: “You can’t really walk into a bar and complain about climate change or peak oil ... That would probably scare off a lot of people.” Yeah buddy, it probably would. Better to trap her in a furrow for three minutes, preach on the evils of global warming, and hope she is stricken with Patty Hearst syndrome.

Organic, climate change and peak oil? Sounds more like leftover rhetoric from an Earth Day summit where some kook is wearing beads, dancing barefoot on stage and smacking a tambourine to no apparent beat.

We live in the age of reality television and Facebook, where dirty laundry is proudly run straight up the flagpole so all 562 “friends” can see it. Privacy and prudence left the building hand-in-hand years ago, and dragged shame out with them. So bring on speed and weed dating. Hey, exposure is the new discretion.

Digging taters … or zucchini … or weeds … was surely never so fun. Here’s to passion in the furrows.

(See here for AP article.)