Almanacs strike this balance between the practical and the poetic. That tightrope act is even starker in older editions. Looking through 18th-century almanacs, there might be a recipe for refining sugar on one page, a poem on the next, a list of court dates after that, and a smattering of dry jokes and witticisms sprinkled throughout. The Old Farmer’s Almanac tagline has long been “useful, with a pleasant degree of humor.”
I used to get the Farmer’s Almanac when I was a kid and the family gardener (we had a quarter-acre of land). I even subscribed to the Farm Journal, which may still have been published in Philadelphia back then.
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