This year when I was getting ready to plant my spring garden, I was a little hesitant to plant according to frost date this year. In February, I had seen a local farmer post on Facebook something that sounded to me like pioneer weather wisdom:
February thunder brings a May frost.
It sounded like something out of the Farmer’s Almanac. We had a thunderstorm on February 2, this year, and while our last frost date is usually around Mother’s Day (May 8), we had a frost on May 16. That frost damaged several crops in the area, and I was glad I had seen that farmer’s post and had waited to plant in my garden.
I saw another saying come true this year as well and this time, it was from farmers who had to wait until after the frost and then had a second delay in planting due to rain. When most finally got around to planting, they noticed that at the same time there was a lot of white stuff floating around in the air.
The Old Farmeru2019s A...
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When cottonwood starts to fly, it’s time to plant corn.
Seeing these sayings come true before my eyes made me wonder what other old farming wisdom was out there from pioneer days and even earlier in history. I began noticing other signs in nature, such as that June Bugs were only seen from our porch when it was a warm night. It had to be even warmer for the frogs to show up. I wondered if it might not be a good idea to wait for them to show up at least three nights in a row before trusting my plants to stay outside all night.
Hmmmm….maybe these farmers and the pioneers before them were on to something.
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I decided to explore 3 different books of old-time weather wisdom from colonial days through pioneer days:
Pioneer wisdom for planting and weather
People have been planting long before there were apps or the internet to tell you when, where and how to plant in a garden. Planting was done by carefully watching signs in nature, including the weather and the moon. Over time, people began to notice patterns for what worked and what didn’t and those observations turned into catchy sayings that could easily be taught to the next generation and the next.
Many folklore sayings don’t have much to back them up scientifically, but then there are others like the two I saw that do show themselves true in nature, at least sometimes.
As survival moms, it could help to know some folklore in regards to weather and planting in the case of a long-term power or Internet outage. A calendar last-frost date could be hard to figure out if you’ve lost track of what day it
A Millennium Primer, t...
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is exactly. Or, by paying attention to nature, you might be able to avoid a late frost like I did this year. Consider, too, that even with all of the today’s technology, weather forecasts are not 100% accurate. Nature has its ways of predicting the weather, too.
Besides the Internet, one of the best sources to find folklore sayings is to get the Old Farmer’s Almanac or one of the books their editors publish. I picked a few up at my local library to look through (after which, I promptly put them on my list of books to buy for my reference shelf).
One of those books was, A Millennium Primer: Timeless Truths and Delightful Diversions by The Old Farmer’s Almanac editors and Tim Clark
A Millennium Primer was written to be a “summary” of the Old Farmer’s Almanacs from 1792 to 1999. The editor wanted it to be like a “suitcase you’ve packed for your journey into the next millennium.” It’s broken down into seven sections covering the human connection, health and food, self-reliance, animals, the sky, time and space and prediction. Here are some of the old sayings I found in the book — some interesting, some accurate, and some never proven to be true!
“When sheep collect and huddle, tomorrow will become a puddle.”
“St. Swithin’s Day (July 15) if thou dost rain, for 40 days it will remain.” (Not proven to be true.)
“Bats flying late in the evening foretell a fine next day.”
“Cows give more milk and the sea more fish when the wind’s from the west.”
“If a fowl roll in the sand, rain is at hand.”
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“There’ll be one snow in the coming winter for every fog in August.”
The book also gives advice on using insects as thermometers. Grasshoppers are loudest at 95F, but can’t make noise below 62F. If you hear a house cricket, count how many times he chirps in 14 seconds and add 40 to the temperature where the cricket is. Ants don’t emerge from their dens unless it is 55F or above. Bees cluster outside their hive at 102F and inside at 57F. No noise from insects means it is 40F or below.
There are also tips on predicting the weather by the moon. Researchers are finding there is a correlation between the full moon, cloudiness, rainfall and thunderstorms. The full moon can raise the temperature of the lower four miles of the Earth’s atmosphere by a few hundredths of a degree – enough to affect the weather.
