If you have a few minutes to spend thumbing through a book, one of the best to browse is the Old Farmer’s Almanac. You may also enjoy their website at www.almanac.com, which has recently been redesigned and offers many free features.
Published yearly, the 2010 Old Farmer’s Almanac is the 218th edition. Founded in 1792 by Robert B. Thomas, who stated “My greatest ambition is to make myself useful to the community,” the almanac continues to embrace this mission.
In the article “The Right Way to Do Things,” you can learn the correct way to shovel snow, the right way to hard-boil an egg, and the best way to pack for plane travel; in “Gardening by the Moon’s Sign” you can find out the best dates for doing various gardening tasks; you can learn how to measure hail and/or hurricane strength; find out the names of the full moons, or discover the many uses for vinegar. This is in addition to weather predictions, tide charts, moon phases, holiday dates, etc. The calendar pages , with their long columns of numbers and symbols “reveal all of nature’s precision, rhythm, and glory.”
The beauty of this book, and what makes it so wonderfully browsable, is the fact that you’ll find yourself reading about things you never realized you wanted to know. You’ll be amused, enlightened and enriiched by browsing in the Old Farmer’s Almanac!