Friday, July 24, 2020

Tempus fugit: Farmers’ Almanacs as Diaries


Tempus fugit:  Farmers’ Almanacs as Diaries                                by Alan Borer

Many Americans have no more contact with the agrarian world than the occasional glance at the Old Farmer’s Almanac.  Published annually since 1792, this creation of Robert B. Thomas is now on the steroids of modern marketing and online advertising.  It still provides guesstimates of what the weather will bring, along with arcane astrological information, planting by the moon, and witty asides.  It brings back the rural world of our forebears.  But were they ever actually used by farmers, or as an actual source of farm information?   The editors and publishers of the farmers’ almanacs were quick to point out that their predictions had no guarantees.  The information contained in an almanac was based on secrets, statistics, and luck.  But except as reading material, and later, as toilet paper, did farmers actually use the almanac?   And if they were, in what ways?

Facts about the readership of a publication as ephemeral as an almanac are themselves ephemeral.  We know that thousands were read, and that hundreds were kept.  They were kept for scratch paper, for nostalgia, and through a lack of time to make clear decisions about their preservation.  Many were saved by throwing them in the attic or barn.  But a precious few were saved as notepads, as diaries, or as farm record books.  Almanacs used in these ways may give us some clues about how they readers used them.  Evidence suggests that “farmer” and “almanac” was not just a fantasy, but in some cases, were a real thing.

Almanacs have a long history.  Often the only printed words in a home, after the Bible and, possibly, a prayer book, colonial Americans used the almanac to predict something out of their control: the weather.  Weather, and the growing season predicated by the weather, was handy to know in an agrarian world.  Any publication that offered advice on how to control or predict the weather was bound to be popular.  Before 1800, the almanacs were among the most popular books of the day.

            As long as America was mostly rural, the almanac maintained a hold on the popular imagination.  As the nineteenth century progressed, and mechanization and urbanization grew, the almanacs remained the same, but with a smaller audience.  From roughly 1820 to 1890, almanacs fell into two categories.  Institutional almanacs, published by newspapers, church denominations, and perhaps most notoriously, political parties, proliferated.  Our collective memory, such as it is, still contains the “Davy Crocket” almanacs of the 1830s and the “Tippecanoe” almanacs of the election of 1840.  They helped elect a congressman and a president.

            The other category of almanacs was the “farmers” almanacs, which continued to predict the weather, the crops, and the astronomical events of the year.  As the rural population declined, an element of nostalgia crept into their pages, as newly urbanized workers recalled, sometimes wistfully, the rural life they knew as children.  By 1890, when the census showed that America was no longer a nation with a frontier, fond yet selective memories of “grandfather’s farm” were sometimes the only exposure to country life people could claim.  The keyword there was ‘grandfather;’ farming, and the almanacs they chronicled, were increasingly a thing of the past.
            To understand the past, we need contemporaneous written words.  Certainly a printed almanac can be used to view the past, but if an almanac contains notes, we have, in effect, a stereo view: a tool, and, how the tool was used.  Most readers of almanacs left no comment, but a few did.  Half a lifetime spent in libraries and archives have given me a few rare glimpses of almanacs that were heavily annotated.  Several almanacs I have seen contain marginal notes on weather, daily events, and lists, whether of cows to be bred or of things bought and sold.  I have no real idea how many almanacs were used this way, but I have seen enough to know they are not unique.  Here are a few examples:

1910 Baugh’s Farmers’ Almanac




            One almanac/diary I have studied was published by the Baugh & Sons Company for the year 1910.  Founded in 1855, Baugh and Sons was, at one time, the oldest agricultural chemical company in the United States.  Specializing in bone meal applications for a variety of crops, the Philadelphia based company advertised their wares in part through a yearly almanac.  Appearing from about 1900 to 1923, the almanac contained the usual astronomical charts, coupled with pages advertising the company’s products.   
            The almanac in question was used as a diary of the work year.  Blank lines for each month provided enough space for use as a diary starting in March.  The diarist, who did not leave us his name, lived and worked in Cumberland County, New Jersey.  That he was a farmer quickly becomes apparent.  Starting in April he sowed oats; in May he plowed for and planted corn; the rest of the summer and fall were taken up with making hay, husking corn, and chopping wood.  Hunting was a pastime; our diarist called it “gunning; and noted on November 26 that he “killed three rabbits.”

            Cumberland County borders on the Atlantic Ocean, on Delaware Bay.  The diarist lived and farmed in a very mild climate.  Living near the beach, his soil was sandy, and he was able to grow and harvest many truck crops.  He “worked in melons” on June 18-19; later in the month, he planted watermelons and sweet potatoes.  On August 20, he “set out celery.”  In other places he mentions peas, strawberries, and “b berries,” without specifying blue or black.

            The farmer frequently mentioned using smelt, or smelts, as fish fertilizer.  “Disk Smelt P. M.,” he wrote on May 27.  On June 6, he “set out smelts,” later in the month he specified that he used smelt to fertilize potatoes.  Assuming he was right about the species of fish, this raises a host of questions.  Fish have been used as fertilizer for centuries, but not always successfully.  Smelt populations are variable; North Pacific smelt are endangered; Great Lakes stocks are dwindling.  Our farmer used manure as well as fish.  Did he use smelt simply because it was plentiful in 1910?  Or was there another reason?

1812 Wood’s Almanac



            In a fairly battered condition, the Wood’s Almanac was a Quaker publication.  Samuel Wood (????-1844) was a New York City bookseller and publisher, starting in 1803.  He specialized in children’s books with many illustrations and morals.[i]  Published irregularly from at least 1811 to 1831, the astronomical calculations were made by one Joshua Sharp, who provided content for several midatlantic publishers.
            The original owner of this almanac made notations around the margin of each month’s information.  He or she made notes of nearly every day of the month, exclusively on the weather.  For example, on the March page, they wrote “Natural Snow Storm 16[th];” “misty 17;” “cold 19:20 [19 & 20].”  Other days of the month were listed along the left or right margins of the monthly text.  Some months contained more detail than others; some months more (or less) days were skipped.  Every entry that I could find addressed the weather.

            In the modern era, we are sufficiently sheltered from the weather and its extremes that we only pay attention to the weather if we are interested.  Farmers still watch the skies, and many urban gardeners still complain about the lack or overabundance of rain.  But two hundred years ago, the weather was a constant obsession, at least for this reader.  Whether he prayed or gave thanks for change is unrecorded, but fascinated he certainly was.

1814 Farmer’s Almanac


            The final example is in the worst shape, yet is the most elaborate use of an almanac as journal.  The original owner, again unnamed, kept a beautifully written, miniscule commentary of the year and then pasted in a separate monthly log in between the two facing pages allowed for each month.  He or she also removed the iconic print symbolizing each month’s weather or work.  I am not quite clear why, possibly to show the forthcoming month.

            Whoever created this folk-calendar, the writing is still perfectly clear and legible.  Most entries kept track of daily weather conditions, but a few other comments can be found by the patient reader.  On April 8 the “grey goose set.”  On the 12th of that same month, “began to plow.”  “John Blasdel …took his Pig” on May 26.  “Washed Sheep” and “sheared sheep” were the chores for June 3 and 8.  For July 30 was the day to “cut Barley” and “finished pulling Flax.”  It took several dictionaries to decipher the entry of May 15: “Cow enixa” or gave birth.  Not every day was about agriculture, especially in wartime: September 12: “Soldiers off to Portsmouth;” October 7:  “fair, windy, cold, Regimental Muster.”  Births and deaths were sometimes recorded; “Captain Hallaburton buried” on April 19th.  Yet the main work of the year, the family farm, never ended.

            While we do not have the farmer’s name, the farm was somewhere in or near Candia, New Hampshire; several of his neighbors can be traced to there.  The diarist frequently mentioned Exeter and Portsmouth, two cities about twenty-five miles apart.  That was a day’s trip in 1814; today it would be less than an hour by car.  Have we made progress? Depends on your point of view.

            So we have come full circle, starting and finishing with Thomson and his Old Farmer’s Almanac.  Although no sweeping statement can be made, it appears that, at least in some places and some cases, farmers did and do use almanacs.  How an individual farmer used them is probably as broad and different as any set of readers can be.  But from the examples I have cited, I feel comfortable in saying that some old farmers did indeed use their almanacs – and not just in the outhouse.

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