By Jennifer Theurer

This fall it was announced that The Farmer’s Almanac would not be printed again after its 2026 issue, but devoted fans of The Old Farmer’s Almanac can rejoice because that familiar yellow cover with the year printed in red is not in fact The Farmer’s Almanac. Not confusing at all, is it?
According to Catherine Boeckmann, executive digital editor of The Old Farmer’s Almanac, there has always been a few farmer’s almanacs printed. The Old Farmer’s Almanac was first published by Robert B. Thomas in 1792, making it the oldest continuously published periodical in North America.
A society that grew its own food needed advice about how to maintain their farms and fields. With no TV or radio to amuse them, astronomy was a popular interest so people also wanted to know the time of sunrise and sunset and phases of the moon.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac provided all of that information along with recipes, general interest news, and amusing stories. Thomas’s mission “to be useful with a pleasant degree of humor” has been maintained all these years ensuring that faithful readers will always have it close at hand.