( By Mark Weinraub )

CHICAGO, May 23 (Reuters) Early to bed and early to rise can make farmers healthy, wealthy and so lonesome they could cry.

Frustrated by the limits their jobs put on their love life, some farmers and ranchers are turning to a Web site designed to play Cupid to members of the agricultural community sprawled across the United States and Canada.

''I had tried a couple of other sites,'' said Dan Temaat, a farmer in western Kansas. ''Those people are all into their real expensive coffee and quitting at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. They just don't understand that out in farm country, that just doesn't happen.'' So Temaat tried FarmersOnly.com, which caters to farmers and lovers of country living from Jerome, Idaho, to Stony Plain, Alberta, who are too busy to meet at bars or coffee shops.

''As soon as I looked through it, I figured that was where I needed to be because it was more of the agricultural people and not the big-city folks,'' Temaat said. ''They all kind of understood farming and ranching. That's pretty uncommon really, especially on those Web sites.'' Jerry Miller, a marketing and public relations executive in Cleveland, launched the site in May 2005. He said his marketing work with the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association showed him the difficulties that farmers face in meeting other people.

''Out in the country, it is different,'' Miller said.

DWINDLING NUMBERS A declining farm population is making it harder for farmers to find like-minded singles. Many young people who live in rural areas move to cities, giving up on farms that have been run by their families for generations.

Last year there were about 2.1 million farmers in the United States, down from 2.2 million in 2000. The farming population was well off its peak of 6.8 million in 1935, according to the National Farm Bureau.

One male user of FarmersOnly.com pointed out to Miller that within a 10-mile (16-km) radius of his farm, there were just nine single people under the age of 30, seven of whom were men.

FarmersOnly.com easily solved that problem. Miller said that 55 per cent of the 19,000 profiles of singles who are currently on the site are of women.

''I was really afraid I was going to have 90 per cent men and 10 percent women,'' Miller said.

Because of the high percentage of women, Miller recently started buying commercial time on male-oriented cable television channels such as ESPN.

The site, which offers a free two-week trial period, costs 12.99 dollars per month, 25 dollars for 3 months, or 59 dollars for a year.

People who live in rural areas understand things about country living that city dwellers do not, said John Hook, who moved to an 83-acre (34-hectare) farm in Kentucky in 2003 after living in the New York area for about 20 years.

FarmersOnly.com attracts people who know that if some calves on his farm get sick, dinner will be interrupted to take care of the problem, Hook said.

'THEY REALLY JUST DON'T GET IT' Hook joined FarmersOnly.com in October and while he has not had any dates yet, he said he has been e-mailing about 12 to 15 women around the country.

''The quality of woman is much different (on the site),'' Hook said. ''They are more self-sufficient, more independent.'' Cynthia Johnson, who works at a library and a farm store in Missouri, said she was relieved to find a site dedicated to the country lifestyle after going through relationships with men who wanted her to adjust to a non-farming life.

''They really just don't get it,'' Johnson said. ''We are a different kind of people. It is who we are. It is really cool to be able to go onto a site with people who do understand.'' Johnson started a long-distance relationship with Temaat, the farmer in western Kansas, after meeting him on the site.

And while not everyone on the site makes their living by growing crops or raising cattle, all of the users have something in common; a love of the land.

''It doesn't matter. ... You (could be) ranching or raising llamas or even growing flowers,'' Johnson said.

REUTERS CH VA VV0844