Since 1792, The Old Farmer’s Almanac has spoken to all walks of life: planting charts for those who grow their own food; recipes for those who live in the kitchen; Moon- and sunrise times for those who watch the skies; and forecasts for those who don’t like the question of weather left up in the air.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac is the oldest almanac in the country—started when George Washington was president. And we’re also proud to say that it’s still made in the U.S.A., which seems to be a rare claim these days.
A new edition comes out every year by early September. You’ll start to see it climb in the nonfiction best-seller list until it’s #1 in the Boston Globe and other newspapers. The Old Farmer’s Almanac is the best-selling annual periodical in North America—sold coast-to-coast in the U.S. and Canada. The latest edition can be found wherever magazines and books are sold, from local bookstores to Amazon to our own Web store. See where to buy the Almanac.
If you look back at archive editions of The Old Farmer’s Almanac (see below), you’ll see that this small book with its yellowish cover hasn’t changed much. The words of the Almanac’s founder, Robert B. Thomas, guide us still: “Our main endeavour is to be useful, but with a pleasant degree of humor.”
Yes, each edition calculates the tides and times for fishermen, travelers, sailors, bookkeepers, beekeepers, gardeners, prognosticators, pollsters, politician, cooks, and really anyone who walks this Earth, including farmers. There are useful tools—sunrise and sunset times, weather predictions, planting calendars, Moon phase dates, and reference tables.
But that’s not all. This almanac is also an annual treasury of facts, trivia, notions, puzzles, pleasantries and amusements, poems, and just about anything and everything. You’ll also find the unexpected, such as stories about “How to Hypnotize a Chicken” and “How Not to Rob a Bank.”
It’s hard to really capture what The Old Farmer’s Almanac is all about. Life as we know it, past to present? The cycles of the seasons? Perhaps it’s best captured in the words of others. Here is a magazine article that seems to truly capture the essence of The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
In recent years, we’ve expanded The Old Farmer’s Almanac line of products—always with an eye on Mr. Thomas’s wise words about keeping things fun and practical—so that now we produce annual calendars, gardening magazines and books, cookbooks, an Almanac for Kids, and even a digital monthly magazine.
We invite you to learn more below—enjoy!
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