MONMOUTH – When Nancy Smith met her future husband, Ivan, for their first dinner date, it didn’t have the most romantic start.

He showed up sporting a black eye.

He told her his cow did it.

She was skeptical. “That’s a heck of a story.”

A cow really did give Ivan the black eye. It happened when the dairy farmer tried to insert an IV into the animal. During dinner his black eye prompted their waitress to share her story of the domestic abuse she’d endured. Other dinner talk: friends who died of cancer.

Despite the not-so-uplifting dinner chatter, Nancy and Ivan were immediately attracted to each other. They made each other laugh.

Fifteen years later, they still seemed to laugh easily as they recalled their story and posed for pictures outside the fifth generation farm, SNAFU Acres.

In 1993, she had placed an ad in “Women Seeking Men” in the Maine Times. Smith wrote in the ad that she was 31, had a leadership type personality, was a professional, had nice curves, was divorced with two kids “looking to have fun again. Fun equals movies, beach conversations from silly to sophisticated …”

She got 40 responses. She talked with a few candidates. Ivan stood out.

“Her ad interested me,” he said. “I figured nothing ventured and nothing gained.”

On their first phone call, “we talked for an hour and a half, and this is with a Maine man!… He made me laugh out loud.” That, she said, was refreshing.

One thing both laughed about was their last names. Nancy’s maiden name was Smith. Her first husband’s last name was Smith. When they talked for the first time, “and he said his name was Ivan Smith, I burst out laughing.”

She checked his references. The report back was good.

Ivan said he liked her sense of humor, found her interesting and charming. Plus he liked how she looked.

She was a forester. When she found out he was a farmer, “I thought, ‘Oh farming! How quaint! That’s so nice!”

Ivan, who was making dinner in the couple’s kitchen as she spoke, let out a sinister laugh at how naive she was back then.

Their relationship “just clicked,” he said. The following Valentine’s Day he proposed. They married on the fourth of July at the East Monmouth Methodist Church, a church his family has attended for generations. Two years later they added a baby girl to their family.

Ivan said he and is wife are an example of opposites attracting. She’s a talker, he hangs back and observes. She makes his life more interesting. “I have controlled chaos.”

Nancy said he brings to her a calming influence. With him, home is “a very safe and warm place.”

Nancy, a three-term member of the House of Representatives for the Monmouth area, said she immediately took to life on the farm, preferring farm chores to housework. When she cleans manure out of the barn, she can see the results. That’s satisfying, she said.

In addition to being dairy farmers, they are foresters, raise poultry and sell eggs and meat. They’ve noticed heightened interest from customers who want to buy local food. In November they started home delivery of meat, dairy and eggs to customers in Gardiner, Hallowell, Manchester and Winthrop.

Every time there’s something in the newspaper about a food recall or inhumane treatment of animals, the Smiths pick up customers. Consumers have grown more concerned about food safety. “They want to know where their food comes from,” she said. “We found people who want to buy local but they’re too busy. They need convenience. It doesn’t get more convenient than the farmer putting it in your freezer for you.”

Though both work hard, farming has one relationship advantage, she said.

“He milks twice a day, every day. And he can’t leave,” she said with a laugh. “So when we need to talk, I know where to find him.”