The Old Farmers Almanac

Today I'm talking with Carol at The Old Farmers Almanac about gardening by the phases of the moon, frost dates, and the history of the almanac. You can follow on Facebook, as well.

00:00 This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. Today I'm talking with Carol at the Old Farmer's Almanac. Hi, Carol. How are you doing today? I'm good. How are you doing, Mary? I'm great. Thank you for being here. Tell me about yourself and about what the Old Farmer's Almanac is.

00:23 Well, the Almanac is ultimately really a calendar and a calendar of the heavens. And so, you know, old farmers or new farmers tend to need calendars because we like to know what's going on and what we need to be planning ahead for. But yeah, the greatest thing about the Almanac, I think, is that it's 232 going on 233 years old. So I'm the newest editor. I'm the 14th editor. I'm the second female editor.

00:51 of the almanac in all those years. So it's quite an honor and a responsibility. But I think we just see that there's such a resurgence and an interest in all of the things that the almanac is about, whether it's gardening and farming or astronomy or folklore or home remedies, those sorts of things. People are really paying more attention to those. So it's a great place to be.

01:18 Yankee Publishing is our home publisher and I worked here 20 years ago on a different publication for Yankee Magazine. So it's a bit of a homecoming for me. I've always been a fan of the Almanac. So it's great to be here. Very nice. So can you tell me where the Almanacs, actually before we even get there, there are two farmers' Almanacs. The old farmers' Almanac is the original? Yes.

01:45 So who puts out the other one? Not that I want to give them any press, but I don't know. We don't know a lot about them either, honestly. They are out of Maine. We are out of Dublin, New Hampshire. And the farmer, not the old farmers, the other one is, I think it started in the 80s or 90s. It's not that old. I think distribution-wise, they are pretty much in New England, whereas we are...

02:13 you know, all of North America. And I think they sell about, maybe their publication is about 300,000, you know, and we sell almost 3 million. So it's a little different, you know, I think, but again, like almanacs, when we started our almanac, there was many almanacs and really ours just kind of, well, we know that the weather was more accurate and we know that we were more entertaining. That's why we stuck around. So.

02:42 Honestly, there was always almanacs. So it's really kind of great that there are more than less, because some are regional, some are really specific to a certain aspect of almanacs typically. So good competition to have, I guess. So you guys are the old farmer's almanac, and you've been around for over 200 years, you said? Yes, 1792, first year. All right. So I have a little tiny story to share about your publication.

03:12 I think that the old farmer's almanac was probably one of the first things I read when I was six years old. I think. Cool. So, yeah, my dad bought it every year because he grew a garden and he needed to know when the safe time to plant was and when the full moon was going to be and all those things that are in there. You mentioned weather.

03:40 the coming weather is going to be. Are you at liberty to share that? Of course. And so yes, that's really what has been, I think, anybody who plants things in the ground, we're always pretty obsessed with the weather. What's it going to do? And so that's true for since, really, if you think back, people that are now homesteaders like yourself or farmers or if they aren't, it's only a couple of generations back that all of us were farmers.

04:10 The weather is of key importance. And as we have weirder weather too, we get a lot of more interest in it. And so from the beginning, it's been about data. It's been about this special formula. And so our founder, Robert B. Thomas, whose birthday is coming up, he really believed in and studied astronomy and planet science and pinned his algorithms and his data.

04:40 data at that time, of course, what he had to three sciences. And sunspot, sun science, sunspot activity is really the one that I think sets us apart in terms of our long range forecasting. We also use climate science and meteorology, but it's really that idea of layering the data that we have in those three science areas, one on top of each other and looking at patterns across...

05:08 that very large data set. And of course, in those days, we do have Robert B. Thomas' hand calculations. And these days we can crunch even more data, even more data is available. But to be more nuanced about it, for sun science, the sun is i