Table Of ContentTable of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
To Patrons
2014 Trends
Food: A Life of Pie
Winners in the 2013 Beet Recipe Contest
Gardening: Beautiful to Look At, Delicious to Eat
How to Hook ’em
Astronomy: Sky Fire
Weather: A Strange Ringing Sensation
Weather: Maps
2013–14: The General Weather Forecast and Report
The 2014 Edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac: Masthead
Astronomy
How to Use This Almanac
Calendar: November 2013
Calendar: December 2013
Calendar: January 2014
Calendar: February 2014
Calendar: March 2014
Calendar: April 2014
Calendar: May 2014
Calendar: June 2014
Calendar: July 2014
Calendar: August 2014
Calendar: September 2014
Calendar: October 2014
Calendar: November 2014
Calendar: December 2014
Get Ready for the Best Comet Ever
Nature: A Flight of Fancy
Best Fishing Days and Times
What are the Three Most Important Words For Vegetable Gardeners?
Nature’s Avengers
The Wholly Grail of Whole Grains
Table of Measures
When Inspiration Strikes, Take Notes
How We Predict the Weather
Weather Regions
Region 1 Forecast
Region 2 Forecast
Region 3 Forecast
Region 4 Forecast
Region 5 Forecast
Region 6 Forecast
Region 7 Forecast
Region 8 Forecast
Region 9 Forecast
Region 10 Forecast
Region 11 Forecast
Region 12 Forecast
Region 13 Forecast
Region 14 Forecast
Region 15 Forecast
Region 16 Forecast
100 Years of Weight Loss
Winners in the 2013 Essay Contest
Mind-Manglers
Gestation and Mating Tables
Putting the World Right
How To Get Bitten by a Pet
Frosts and Growing Seasons
Planting by the Moon’s Phase
Secrets of the Zodiac
Best Days for 2014
Plants That Repel Pests
Tide Corrections
Time Corrections
Anecdotes & Pleasantries
Special Supplement, A Reference Compendium
To Patrons
Once (a Year) Is Not Enough
An “almanac,” according to Merriam—Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, is “a
publication containing astronomical and meteorological data for a given year,
and often including a miscellany of other information.”
Certainly that describes this Almanac: Astronomical data? Absolutely.
Meteorological data? Daily. For a given year? Precisely—and then some.
Miscellany? More than most.
Indeed, we who labor to maintain this Almanac’s place in our time and its
purpose in modern life, as our predecessors did in their day, understand this
genre’s components and its span. Each year, we aim to execute and so meet (or,
perchance, exceed) readers’ expectations around the clock, in any weather, on
any matter.
It was management’s new idea, presented in a meeting last year, that we could
not predict or, initially, fathom: a monthly Almanac. For an instant, time
stopped. Then, as if on a ship in a storm, we, the editors, pitched and yawed
against these winds of change, sensing to the depths of our beings that our
anchor in tradition was irretrievably lost. (Dear reader, if you, too, are railing
right now, we sympathize and urge restraint as you read on.) Finally, sinking
spirits paused to gasp for air. In that moment, management’s second lightning
bolt struck our masthead: “The Almanac Monthly will be an e-book—and unique
in the genre.”
As details were unfurled, color returned to ashen faces. This muchloved
annual would continue in this print form, with Calendar Pages intact, weather
forecasts in full, miscellany unmatched, and more pages than ever.
The Almanac Monthly contains timely, seasonal, typical Almanac articles in
full color about astronomy and calendar events, gardening, outdoors, food and
cooking, home and home remedies, history, how-to, and more, plus (a first!)
weather forecast updates. What’s more, the technology of the electronic
magazine’s “pages” allows reading matter to be enriched with audio recordings
as well as how-to and other videos. (To learn more or see for yourself go to
Almanac.com/Monthly.) While with the Almanac Monthly we may be bending
the definition of the genre, we are also setting the course for our future and
continuing the legacy of our founder, Robert B. Thomas. Be assured, however,
that our goal and obligation in all of our endeavors remains the same: to make
Almanacs that you, our loyal users, find consistently and unfailingly “useful,
with a pleasant degree of humor.”
—J. S., June 2013
However, it is by our works and not our words that we would be judged.
These, we hope, will sustain us in the humble though proud station we have
so long held in the name of
Your obedient servant,
Visit Almanac.com
Always “useful, with a pleasant degree of humor”!
ALMANAC.COM/WEATHER
Get daily forecasts, folklore, blogs, history, and detailed reference.
ALMANAC.COM/GARDENING
Grow more, better, right now!
ALMANAC.COM/ASTROMOMY
Everything under the Sun, including the Moon, every day (and night)
ALMANAC.COM/COOKING
Make meals easy and delicious with thousands of free recipes.
ALMANAC.COM/NEWSLETTERS
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(it’s free!)
for timely new ideas and special offers.
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ALMANAC.COM/BLOGS
Experts share weather, gardening, cooking, and health ideas, and readers talk
back.
ALMANAC.COM/CONTESTS
Win fabulous prizes!
Share photos or recipes, test your trivia knowledge, enter our drawings—have
fun!
ALMANAC.COM/VIDEOS
Learn how-to or get a giggle with us in the garden and kitchen, on full Moon
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ALMANAC.COM/MOBILE
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2014 Trends
Compiled by Stacey Kusterbeck
ON THE FARM
Look for more of our cities and suburban areas to adopt codes that allow
residents to keep chickens, goats, and other livestock more commonly
found “down on the farm.”
—Kirsten Conrad Buhls, extension agent, Fairlington Community
Center, Arlington, Virginia
Now Growing
peacotum: a reddish-yellow fruit that is part peach, apricot, and plum
new varieties: crispier romaine lettuce, sweeter seedless watermelons,
milder onions, and antioxidant-rich broccoli
heirloom flours of ancient grains: einkorn, sorghum, millet, and teff
corn that requires less water
perennial grains, making annual plowing unnecessary
seaweed on farms in the ocean, for use as food and biofuel
Managing invasive exotic plants, protecting streams from sediment
runoff, and maintaining wildlife connectivity are providing benefits to
the health of the land, livestock, and crops.
—Thomas Woltz, principal, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape
Architects, New York City
Coming Soon
automated tractors that operate without a person behind the wheel
robots with foam-padded hands that pick strawberries without bruising the
fruit
trucks with cameras to locate oranges and hydraulic arms to knock the fruit
loose from the trees
small, helicopter-like drones to fly over crops and transmit pictures that
show farmers whether plants are healthy
Urban Undertakings
vertical farms in abandoned factories, with vegetables grown on small
rafts floating on water, nourished by waste produced by fish (aka
aquaponics).
community orchards kept year-round by members who get to harvest the
fruit for themselves
community vegetable gardens on land occupied by apartment buildings,
churches, fire stations, and businesses
BY THE NUMBERS
Description:Accept no substitutes! America’s oldest continuously published periodical and best-loved annual is often imitated but never equaled. This is the one, the only, Old Farmer’s Almanac! Recognized for generations by its familiar yellow cover, the Almanac for 2014 promises to be "useful, with a pleas
