The Old Farmer’s Almanac has me intrigued. My children’s babysitter, we were lucky enough to have 10 of their early years, looked to the Almanac not only for times to plant her garden, but also weaning babies from the bottle, and when to cut their hair for optimum regrowth.
I never followed up on how her garden grew, although the kids came home with stories of “helping Margie” in the dirt, carrying in produce, and trying fresh vegetables for the first time. No better preschool could have been had.
There was no follow up on whether the dates we chose to cut their hair worked either, still they all have full heads of hair.
Weaning them from their bottles at a year old also must have worked, as they do very well drinking their milk from a glass at 22, 26, and 29 years of age.
The Almanac claims to be 80% correct in their predictions. They were off only by a week with these cooler temperatures we’ve been having to start the month of August. They have wedding weather predictions that are used by some, but the Almanac still suggests renting tents just in case the wedding date falls in that 20% non-accurate rate.
The people at the Almanac forecast the weather 18 months ahead of time and still have an 80% accuracy rate. Meteorologists of today are skeptical about the 1792 weather predicting methods of Almanac’s founder, Robert B. Thomas, but there must be some validity to the 225 year process.
If you care to check out a couple predictions to end the summer, there’s the one about best fishing days from August 21 to September 6. Or the one that claims 50 meteors per hour will be seen to the northeast from August 11-13.
Or how about trying the one “soft words warming hard hearts”?
Happy Reading!