Beauty has no set weather, no sure place.

Her careful pageantries are here as there,

With nothing lost. – Lizette Woodworth Reese

Weather Trends

The cold ordinarily intensifies in the third week of November. Chances of weather in the 60s are still 50/50, but a high in the 70s only happens once in 20 years, and days in the 30s and 40s are becoming common.

The Natural Calendar

Red fruits stand out on the flowering crabapple trees and on the hawthorns, on the honeysuckles and on the bayberries. Skunk cabbage has already pushed to the surface, and it is ready to bloom in a warm December.

Raspberry and black raspberry foliage is typically gone when the sun comes into its early winter sign of Sagittarius today. Hepatica and ginger foliage is brown from frost.  Wild asparagus stalks have lost all their color. Comfrey has withered in the garden.

Clement’s Day, Nov. 23, was the traditional beginning of Winter in medieval Europe; the fifth cold front of the month ordinarily keeps that feast in the Ohio Valley and chills the cloudy skies. As a rule, three out of the next seven days show no sun at all. As the weather gets colder, wild game moves to areas where cover is thickest. For deer, mating season is usually over. White-tailed bucks have their gray winter coats now, and they are starting to drop their antlers.

Fed by honeysuckle berries, robins linger in town and in the woods. Starlings cluck and whistle at sunrise, and cardinals and pileated woodpeckers and bobwhites sing off and on throughout the day. Finches work the sweet gum tree fruits, digging out the seeds from their hollows. Sparrow hawks appear on the fences, watching for songbirds and mice.

The beeches and the pears have lost their leaves, and the silver maples and the oaks thin out. Bittersweet is wide open along the fencerows. Bright pink coralberries shine through the undergrowth. Seed tufts of virgin’s bower complement tufts of milkweed, thimble plants and cattails.

In the Field and Garden

As the weather becomes colder, watch for declines in livestock milk production that are not related to feed changes or drying off; these declines could be due to health or other stress factors.

If you are planning to use young trees or shrubs for fodder, consider planting now before deep cold strikes or order now for setting out in early or middle spring.

Rheumatism in livestock and people increases during the cold and damp weather of winter, especially prior to the arrival of cold fronts.  A tablespoonful of paprika and one of molasses per day are considered helpful by some in reducing joint stiffness.

Cool-weather pastures (like many warm-weather pastures) may or may not produce the kind of nutrition you need for your livestock. Just because a pasture is green doesn’t mean it will let you get by without feeding grain.

Carefully monitor nutrition of your pregnant animals – that’s one of the major ways to prevent abortions.

It’s time to plug in the electric bucket heaters and try to keep the water near 50 degrees for your livestock. 

Almanack Classics

The Facts of Life

By Anonymous

One day, I came home from school and went to the outhouse without changing my clothes.

Our outhouse had two holes, and I wanted to see how the men could stand up and use them, so I stood over the round hole. And as you might have guessed, I fell in.

Evidently, I caught myself, since my shoes were the only part that were soiled.

I tried cleaning them with pages from the Sears, Roebuck catalog as best I could, but that didn’t work so well. So, I went for my mother for help.

She had picked her dry shell-out beans and had stomped on them in a sack. And she was picking out the beans from the trash in a washtub in the middle of the floor when I came to see her.

I sat down on the floor on the opposite side of the tub, but I didn’t fool her. She knew something was wrong. I don’t remember the details, but she wasn’t very happy.

This was during the Depression, and there wasn’t much money for shoes. My mother always said she never sent any of us to bed without our supper, but I do remember not eating that night.

Nevertheless, my shoes were clean and ready to wear to school the next morning.

Now, none of this would have happened if it weren’t for the fact that we weren’t very knowledgeable about the facts of life in the old days. I think I must have been the most naïve of anyone.

Answers To Last Week’s Sckrambler

In order to estimate your Sckrambler IQ, award yourself 15 points for each word unscrambled, adding a 50-point bonus for getting all of them correct. If you find a typo, add another 15 points to your IQ.

EDUF FEUD

OODF FOOD

EDURP PRUDE

RCDEU CRUDE

UEDLG GLUED

DEUEUQ QUEUED

WEDERB BREWED

DEWME MEWED

DCOEO COOED

OOBED BOOED

This Week’s Rhyming Sckrambler

YPG

LIFP

PPI

HPIS

PRIG

IIAPHSR

PIZ

BPIL

BLLWHPUI

PIT

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Copyright 2024, W. L. Felker