In print since 1818, and not to be confused with The Old Farmers' Almanac which started in 1792, The Farmers' Almanac is shutting down and closing up shop. Their web site will be up through December 2025 and the 2026 Farmers' Almanac will be their last edition:
Dear Friends,
It is with a great appreciation and heartfelt emotions that we write to share some sad news. After more than 200 years of sharing a unique blend of weather, wit and wisdom, we’ve made the very difficult decision to write the final chapter of this historical publication. The 2026 Farmers' Almanac will be our last edition.
Via Boing Boing, which adds:
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The 2026 Farmers’ Almanac Will Be Its Last Edition
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday November 10, @01:29AM (2 children)
They give no explanation. Does the Internet gets to add another notch to its cable sheath, for yet another print publication terminated? I don't know.
Maybe it's more to do with the population shift in which farmers have sunk from 90% of the population to under 2%.
Or perhaps it's also the encroachment of petty authorities taking a too dim view of gardening, discouraging it, whether purposefully or inadvertently is hard to say. You can't very well do any gardening at all if you live in an apartment. I mean, yeah you could still do stuff like grow marijuana in a closet, but for nice wholesome veggies, you shouldn't have to resort to such expensive measures. Growing plants in a pot on a balcony is okay for mere ornamentation, but is rather lousy for food. If you live in a residence, you are going to get into a fight with your HOA (if you're in one), and/or city officials if you try to grow a garden in your front yard, can really only do that in your back yard.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 10, @03:02AM
>Maybe it's more to do with the population shift in which farmers have sunk from 90% of the population to under 2%.
I'm thinking: with online distribution the world just may not need both the Old Farmers' Almanac, the Farmers' Almanac and similar publications. It's market consolidation.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10, @03:16AM
I'll give you the abbreviated 2026 almanac.
January will be cold and summer will be hot.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Covalent on Monday November 10, @05:39AM (7 children)
Nobody actually uses it anymore — the only place I've ever seen one is in the gift shop at a Cracker Barrel. Hard to keep a "publication" in the black when that's your audience.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Monday November 10, @11:56AM (4 children)
That is a probably a main reason. After all Farmers don't really use it anymore. For them things have gone all computerized. Keeping meticulous records of everything. That goes in, on and when it's supposed to be harvested. They don't stand around flipping pages in a book anymore.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday November 10, @12:48PM (3 children)
That, and my impression is that their understanding of weather pattern prediction in particular is pulled directly from their rear ends. Anyone who is relying on it to determine planting seasons is taking a big risk, for example.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Tuesday November 11, @04:29AM (2 children)
TFA mentions it was a guide to planting by moon phases, a neighbour of mine was a big believer in this and had a fixed calendar for it. I wondered where it came from and did quite a bit of Googling to try and find out, and it's one of those things that everyone "knows" but no-one knows where it came from. The closest I could find to an origin for it was pre-Christian pagan moon-worship. Seriously.
Pruning fruit trees is another example, for every one of the four seasons you'll find a gardening guide telling you that's the time to prune and also why the other times are when you shouldn't prune, with some sort of rationale each time. Even the audio woo-woo'ers are most consistent than this.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday November 11, @06:23AM (1 child)
Here in France there are many gardeners who swear by this without having any evidence or rationale for doing so. My wife's uncle was a professional florist and gardener and he followed this advice all of his career. He did grow some amazing flowers but would not accept that it might have been due to any other factor - it was to him because he planted and harvested his flowers depending on the moon's cycle.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Tuesday November 11, @07:37AM
Máni be praised, she has blessed the flowers for us!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10, @12:34PM (1 child)
I did learn from this that The Farmers' Almanac and The Old Farmers' Almanac are two different publications. I never knew that.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 11, @12:04AM
Now you can forget it (if not already done).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday November 10, @02:52PM (3 children)
Ace Hardware is nationwide, I think. I grew up shopping there, still do. Still the most convenient and cheapest way to buy like "one 8-32 1 inch long hex bolt" or whatever if I need one. More realistically if I need an obscure metric size LOL as I'd have the above in stock... unless I ran out and need just one more...
Anyway the point is that this product is a stereotypical "sit by the cash register" at Ace Hardware impulse purchase since at LEAST the 1970s. Thats the target market and they used to sell pretty well.
As a kid/youth/young adult it cost about the same as a "tv guide" which cost about as much as a candy bar. I'll buy that. Yes I know its mostly bullshit the bad parts barely a step above astrology and there not being much good parts, but it might mildly entertain me for at least a half hour (I have a phone to entertain me now for "free" ... so that impulse purchase is dead) and its got a nice calendar and planting information for my garden (you'd think after living here half a century I'd have a pretty good idea of the date of last frost but they included other stuff like if you're germinating indoors you need to start around Valentines Day to be ready for transplant later depending obviously on species of plant etc its well documented)
Anyway, I googled around and the fancy binding collectors edition is no longer "candy bar price" but $19.99. So for something replaced by a website/blog I can't justify paying $20. Now if it was still "candy bar cheap" sure I'd pay just for the LOLs.
Like many things, the price has hyperinflated and if it sold for wage inflation adjusted prices of 1970 I'd sure as heck keep on buying it.
But $20 for a printout of someone's blog, basically? Naaaah.
I think people forget how magazine type publications used to be "very well funded" by advertising and production was very cheap, so some magazines would have run a profit at $0 list price but the charged a fee to make it seem more valuable. Newspapers used to be like this, my local legacy paper made $8/issue off ads and sold for much less and they got busted printing copies and tossing them right in the recycling dumpster while advertising their high print runs, was an interesting fraud case. Anyway those days are dead and you can't get a "magazine type publication" for 99 cents anymore. At least with their overhead.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 10, @03:38PM (2 children)
I think a lot of publications lived on the subscription model of regular predictable sales. When that dried up they just started charging the annual rate, or more, for a single issue. My son bought a magazine at the grocery store the other day, maybe 60 pages center-stapled, not particularly high quality print - plenty of pictures, but... $16.99? Yeah, no. It'll be another 15 years before anyone in this household buys another magazine.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday November 10, @09:34PM (1 child)
And he buys it for the articles, right? Hrrr-hrrr. :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 11, @03:23AM
Dayum, I haven't even thought about "those" magazines since... well certainly not since we had to have a chat with him about using his debit card on OnlyFans... last week we had to remind him that flirting with bikini picture accounts on Facebook isn't a great look for him with his girlfriend. With "all that" out there for free for a swipe of the smartphone, the old print magazine format must have a really peculiar niche audience these days. Quick search says Penthouse went all digital in 2016, apparently Playboy took a 5 year break and now they're trying again: https://labusinessjournal.com/featured/theyre-back-playboy-returns-to-print/ [labusinessjournal.com]
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]