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St. Louis Magazine - May, 2008
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In This Issue

Features

The Kirkwood Shootings: The Man Who Threw Chairs The Kirkwood Shootings: The Return to City Hall The Kirkwood Shootings: Kirkwood, Meacham Park and the Racial Divide A Conversation with Elsie Hainz McGrath The Queen of Possibilities 101 Things Every St. Louisan Must Do Eastman's Eyes The Kirkwood Shootings: Why Did Cookie Thornton Kill? The 17 Most Intriguing Trends, Concepts and People In St. Louis Dining Today Flashback - 1965

Departments

You Can't Shut J.C. Up Bold Case Mr. Coffee Sure Shot Pretty Gutsy for Grandparents Give 'Er A Hand Auto Manics 10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About the Renaissance Faire Town and Country Grooms Like Gifts, Too Suit Up Setting the Scene on STAGES New Antique Music Player Alive and Kicking Exclusive Q&A: ~scape's Eric Kelly Frugal Foodie - Pappy's Smokehouse First Look - SLeeK Review - Araka Kitchen Q&A - Lisa Keller Liquid Assets - The Ultimate Taste Test A Restaurant Critic's Advice to the Graduating Class of '08
2008.03.28 - Discerning Palette: Jerry O. Wilkerson Retrospective
The Saint Louis University Museum of Art is pleased to present: Discerning...
2008.05.09 - John Armleder and Olivier Mosset
Inaugural Main Gallery show by new curators Anthony Huberman and Laura Fried...
2008.07.01 - Awesome Amphibians
Frogs, toads, snakes, lizards, newts, salamanders and caecilians, oh my!...
2008.07.01 - Bare Witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks Exhibit
As Life's first African-American photographer, Gordon Parks' work documented...
2008.07.01 - Bob Hartzell
Columbia artist exhibits at Kitchen K as part of Art Saint Louis' Off-Site...

Town and Country

A local farmer looks for love in reality TV

Town and Country
Photograph by Joseph Viles, courtesy of The CW Network, LLC
It’s a concept that has “Semi-Manufactured Culture-Clash Hi-larity!” written all over it: 10 Manolo-wearing Big City Babes spend a month on a farm, splitting their time between pitching hay and pitching woo with the Hunky Farmer who calls it home—all with the hope of becoming his Small Town Bride! They’ll whine about their chipped nails and pit stains, he’ll shake his head from atop a tractor and call them pampered prima donnas, and there’ll be nightly catfights in the barn!

Or not. But you can bet that’s what TV studio execs were thinking when they dreamed up Farmer Wants a Wife, the Green Acres–style reality show that filmed at a Portage des Sioux farm last summer and debuted on the CW on April 30. The titular farmer, 30-year-old Matt Neustadt, was the prom king at Orchard Farm High School—of course, it was a class of 59—but since then, life on the farm hasn’t exactly been conducive to a love life. “There really isn’t any opportunity to meet someone in the middle of a 100-acre cornfield,” he says. (And it’s a safe bet that any woman he did stumble upon in the middle of a 100-acre cornfield might not be relationship material.)

Neustadt, who beat out five other farmers from across the country for the privilege of putting the girly-girls to work on his 2,000-acre spread, is cagey about details, but he did let slip what might be the biggest twist of the eight-week series: “The gals did an awesome job.” So much for any “hay fever” jokes …