Dave Wood

I just discovered in my new Farmer’s Almanac it’s All Fool’s Day. In my youth most farmers accessed the Almanac to foresee what kind of weather would support or not support their crops.

But my mom only used it to make sure she observed holidays correctly. One she loved was April Fool’s day, which reminds me of her love for pancakes and occasionally pulling the leg of the love of her life. Every year Mom made a special prank for the man she loved. The rest of us had her usual; hers including beet pickles.

On April Fool’s Day she served her scrumptious pancakes. One was especially prepared for my father who ate very fast in order to get back to the love of his life --his Guernseys.

On those All Fool’s days we tore into our flapjacks with vigor; dad put knife to pancake and sawed and sawed, but to no effect. Finally he picked it up with his huge hands and ripped and tore, as the cake crumbled onto the plate, leaving dad with a handful of cheesecloth, which mom had inserted in between two tablespoons of batter. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he chuckled, “fooled me again. Next time I’ll know better.” And mom laughed and laughed until the tears came.

I’m positive it didn’t come as a surprise to dad after years of the same prank because he knew how difficult it was for this city girl to become a country wife. Laughter was good medicine.

And the Almanack lives on after more than two centuries of dispensing astronomical, astrological and agricultural advice. Today it’s different than it was in the 18^th century having dropped the K from its masthead, probably because readers thought that the old way was a misspelling. Nowadays it’s chock full of advertisements like “It’s the best natural fertilizer in the world,” nicknamed, “The chicken soup of the soil.”

And there’s more!! On page 203 there’s a picture of a farmer driving a team of draft horses.  Turns out he’s one of the many Amish males who formerly depended for relief from the prostate troubles by swilling saw palmetto until a fellow named Dr. Jinz, a chemist, added zinc, copper, selenium, pumpkin seeds, and nettle root to the saw palmetto juice. The Amish customers report that the concoction works better than the old juice.

But wait! There’s still more: Several pages of classified ads, promising luck at the gaming tables with charms like a Mojo bag for carrying coins on the way to the nearest slot machine. And a bevy of psychics who can cure ailments, bedevil enemies and all manner of magical machinations.

Only two things bother me about its psychic department. One such psychic is named Jolene, not exactly a typical name for a psychic and the second psychic’s name is Ruth Ann. We have a next-door neighbor named Jolene and my wife’s name is Ruth Ann, who grew up in Oak Lawn, Ill., a town well known for its plethora of psychics and fortune tellers.

As I write this story, the snow is piling up around the house and I’m considering the possibility of Jolene and Ruth Ann leading double lives. However, I take some solace in the Almanac’s weather prediction for the upper Midwest:

MARCH 2026: Temp 34 degrees (6 above average), Precip. 95 per cent below average. A few T-Storms, warm. Sunny, cool, then warm rainy periods. Showers, chilly. Cool. Rainy. Then sunny turning cool.

So much for prognostication. But long live the Farmer’s Almanac!