34-year-old farmer seeks wife through TV show

Fabian Berger actually comes from Solothurn but for the past 18 months he has been farming here in Zug, where he very much enjoys his work. While he particularly likes working on the farm he feels there is one thing missing from his life, namely a wife, so he is taking action to get one by appearing in a TV programme about farmers looking for wives, a sort of agricultural blind date.

At present, the programme is in the making but there is already a short video about Fäbu, as he is known, on the site of the 3+ TV company which is making it.

The self-styled romantic farmer mentioned how he had initially worked on a farm in Bern and had thought of doing something else. However, he soon realised farming was in his blood and took on this new job at a dairy and pig farm, which also grows crops, near the border with the canton of Zurich. He loves working with the pigs, which he finds are not dissimilar to humans. If not with the pigs, he enjoys playing with the farm dog, Django, or working on large machinery there.

What is strange is that Berger himself had never watched the TV programme whereby possible future wives are introduced to love-hungry farmers. But he had watched one where country ladies prepare their own special regional dishes and he suggested to his boss that she take part. He did eventually see the programme and when he met up with a representative of the TV company at an agricultural show in eastern Switzerland, he decided to take part.

As mentioned, the programme featuring him is still in the making but he has met the ladies taking part, though not yet got to know them properly. It is 14 years since he was last in a relationship, but felt that, at the age of 20, he was not ready for one.

But now he is. “Of course, I would like it to work out, but if it doesn’t, so be it,” he said. Neither has he got a picture in mind of the perfect wife. “What is important is that there is a chemistry between us, a relationship where we both can still do our own thing. She does not have to be a farmer’s daughter. In fact, it might be good if did her own job away from the farm,” he said.

One of the first things he would do if he found the right potential wife would be to introduce her to his parents, “the best in the world”, and his wider family and friends all over Switzerland. “I am very much a family person and am the godfather to a two-year-old boy,” he added. As to hobbies, the 1.72-metre-tall farmer likes playing Hornussen (Swiss game where a puck is hit with a bat through the air), which helps him to keep fit, not least through practising twice a week. Furthermore, he likes rock music and is very positive in his outlook. He is a bit of an adventurer, too, and, as a 19-year-old, once walked from Bern to Monaco in 19 days. He has also done bungee-jumping from the dam in the Verzasca Valley in the Ticino, something which he thought his future girlfriend might like to do with him. “What I can promise her is that, with me, life will never be boring,” he concluded.