FARMERS: Hardy Perennial

In 1792 George Washington’s first administration was drawing to a close. Late in that year a 26-year-old Massachusetts bookseller & stationer named Robert Bailey Thomas brought out the first edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac. It was an immediate success. It is a success today—the oldest almanac in the U. S.

Son of a farmer, self-educated, Publisher Thomas had a passion for information that was useful to the average man. Once a year for 54 years his almanac came forth to stir the imagination of its readers with notable anniversaries, give them the schedule of sunup and sundown, tell them the value of foreign gold.

Originally little more than a farmer’s calendar, The Old Farmer’s Almanac soon began to show its author’s convictions. In 1808, taking up the controversy of public v. private schools, he observed: “Fun, frolick and filigree are too much practised at the academies for the benefit of a farmer’s boy. Let them have a solid and useful education.” Eleven years later he was moved to warn: “Either the body or the mind must be engaged in honest industry; for idleness is like grog —take nothing else and—’you’re gone, man.’ ”

Fabulous was the Old Farmer’s success in predicting diurnal or hebdomadal weather a year in advance. Legend has it that the publisher, pressed by a typesetter for a July 13 forecast, replied hastily: “Anything, anything.” The impish employe set up “Rain, Hail and Snow.” On July 13, sure enough, it rained, hailed and snowed.* A Providence, R. I. clerk kept count of the Old Farmer’s forecast for 1900. It was 33% correct— 2% below the U. S. Weather Bureau’s day-ahead record.

Today the Old Farmer’s yellow paper cover, drilled for a kitchen nail, is the same as in 1792. Although it now lacks the crotchety personal stamp of Founder Thomas, no longer carries temperance articles (with pictures of a sinister nurse mixing gin with the milk to pacify the baby), the Old Farmer has better than 100,000 subscribers (mostly New Englanders), from Bangor, Me. to Hong Kong. These ardent readers feared that the Old Farmer’s 1940 issue would be its last. After the death of its fourth copyright owner, Bostonian Carroll J. Swan, in 1935, Little, Brown & Co. agreed to publish the almanac for five years. Its contract ended with the 148th edition. But this week the 149th was scheduled to come out bright & shiny as ever, kitchen-nail hole and all. Its new publisher: shrewd, shaggy Robb Sagendorph, Boston social registerite and Harvardman (’22), who publishes and edits the monthly Yankee, at Dublin, N. H.

Unchanged are the Old Farmer’s astronomical and tide charts, its page of “Poetry, Anecdotes and Pleasantries” (sample pleasantry: “Remember the Foolish Virgins in the Biblical parable and do not be caught with an empty gas tank”). It has articles on how to run a roadside vegetable stand, how to serve baked beans, why old nails and spikes should be saved (for cash), how to make candles, dresses, how to avoid food poisoning. As of old, it records that “Ann Bloomer introduced the bloomer on Jan. 2,” that “wolves kill 3 at St. Paul [on Nov. 18], 1891,” that John the Baptist was separated from his head on Aug. 29.

No old fuddy-duddy, the almanac also reflects the current scene, duly records the capitulation of King Leopold of the Belgians (May 28, “Moon runs high”), the arrival of swallows at San Juan Capistrano, Calif. (March 19). Its full explanation of Social Security Act provisions is up to the minute.

But the readers of The Old Farmer’s Almanac do not like their beloved annual to change too much from year to year. Many of them would heartily agree with the Nashua, N. H. subscriber who wrote in, a few years ago: “Dear Sir, I have read The Old Farmer’s Almanac for the last 75 years and I wish the damned fool that changed the reading of the moon’s column had died before he done it. Yours respectfully. . . .”

*The Old Farmer now confines its weather predictions to the East. Last week’s Midwest storm (see p. 14) was clean out of the OldFarmer’s ken