Hello world, welcome to WFHR's Rapids Report, probably brought to you by Crockett Sceptic.
For this August 29th, 2025, have your host James here, and I am, they don't even need
to pay me for the next half an hour.
I get to talk to Tim Goodwin, senior editor of the Old Farmers Almanac.
One of my favorite publications, like many of you out there, I've been reading this my
whole life, and I've always enjoyed this copy, and when this comes out new, we're very
excited to be able to talk with you about it Tim, how you doing?
I'm doing great James, how are you, you know, really happy to be on, you know, it's such
an exciting time with the Almanac just coming out, so, you know, we're happy to spread
the word and just want to get people interested in the 2026 edition.
Yeah, we're really looking forward to diving into it with you.
Before we do Tim, this is our first time getting a chance to hang out with you and everything,
would you mind telling us what your position is over there?
So senior editor, just recently got promoted from associate editor, you know, so I do
a little bit of everything.
I write a little bit for not just the Almanac, but for our annual garden guide.
We have a kids Almanac that comes out every other year.
We do wall calendars that we also write a big part of what I do is fact checking stories.
We have a good stable of writers, some that are one-off, you know, and special, you know,
specialties in their field, others that have been writing for us for years and decades.
So fact checking those stories when they come in, do a lot of proofing of, you know, individual
stories lay out the whole book before it gets sent to the printer.
You know, we always give it as many looks as we can to just to make sure we got it all
right.
So there's never a dull moment.
It's a, you know, it's a job that has a lot of different aspects to it.
So it's nice because no day is really ever the same.
I can only imagine and have such a respect for editors and the work that is done there.
It's always meant a lot.
I think in 2025, it means more than maybe it ever has.
And certainly the job has probably gotten to be even more critiqued by people who maybe
don't always know what the job entails.
So you have a lot more of that.
The work, and you're a perfect person to talk to about this, too, because the next thing
I was thinking about, and I talked about this last year, we'll care a little bit, the
prep that is done from the release of this, the 2025 to 2026.
What kind of work is done in between that time by you and the team?
Oh, where do I start?
And when we put, when we put an addition to bed, so to speak, you know, we're done about
in June, and that's when it gets sent to the printer, you know, it's given it all, you
know, last few reads, you know, people get a chance to look at everything.
And we really start to dive into the story creation process.
You know, we sit down as a group, we come together with our ideas, we talk about, you
know, what did we do last year?
Maybe could we have been missing, you know, what, you know, we always want to do something
in gardening and farming, you know, food, you know, there's a lot to do with history and
folklore.
So we just want to make sure that we're covering all of our bases and giving, you know,
our long-time readers, you know, what they expect when they come back to the old farmers
all night, each year.
So we sit down, we talk, Carol, who's our main editor, she takes all of our ideas and
kind of puts them into a spreadsheet, and she starts kind of picking and choosing and
seeing what would make a good lineup.
And then from there, it's, who wants to write what, what kind of writers do we have that
could write a specific story?
You know, I'm always putting my hand up to write a couple of stories.
You know, my background was, you know, in journalism for newspapers for a long time.
So I always love to write, you know, I love that creation process.
And then, you know, we kind of wait a little bit, you know, we wait for those writer stories
to come in.
We spend our time writing stories.
There's a lot of data that comes in as well, you know, we get a, we have astronomers
that we work with that send in, you know, information on the upcoming eclipses and what
to see in the night sky each month.
So, you know, we're editing that, we're asking questions.
And then, you know, as we get through, once the stories come in and they go through the
whole editing process, we start to backcheck and then we look at layouts.
So it's a continuous process that has really been set in stone for a long time and it flows
really well.
It gives us all an opportunity to really take a step back and look at everything multiple
times because really what it's all about is the reader experience and giving those, you
know, all menac readers exactly what they expect from, you know, this publication that
been going for 234 years.
Yeah.
Tim, we're next month here at WFHR, actually in November.
We're going to be celebrating 85 years.
And in our history, we have always been a news station that, you know, just talks facts,
walks the line.
We are not in anybody's pocket or anything like that.
And we've talked quite a bit about the importance of journalism and how much of it we've lost.
We even tend to do this a little bit over here, though.
And I think put a lot of focus on politics and some other, those kind of departments.
But the journalism and the reporting being done by the farmers, all menac you and the
team over there is just as integral and just as important.
And it's great to hear that that is still doing well, that that is still thriving and
that it's being done and being done to the level that you guys are.
So tip of the hat to you guys.
That's really cool to hear.
So the look behind the curtain there.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's, you know, it's a long process, you know, people sometimes get lost in the fact that
we come out once a year and like, oh, you know, what else do you do?
But it's like, it's such a rigorous process and, you know, tedious just because there
is such a long history of the all menac and, you know, readers expect a lot out of us.
You know, we're not going to be giving you what happened yesterday, like you would,
you know, you're not giving that most up to date current events.
So we're trying to give reader stories that will impact their lives that will give them
information they may have not known that they want to know.
And so it's all about, you know, making sure it's right, it's accurate and it's a good
read too.
You know, we don't want to be boring.
We want it to be fun.
We want to read some humor to it.
And we want people to be able to take these stories and share it with somebody else.
Something we really enjoy talking with Carolyn about last year and you can find that interview
in our archives at rapidsreport.com or WFHR.com under the Rapids Report label.
I encourage you to listen to it because one of the things that I found really interesting,
one of my first questions for Carol was how, how have you guys stayed relevant all these
years and really diving into a lot of what you were just talking about there, Tim, and certainly
listening to the, you know, your audience and doing the work that they are looking for,
covering gardening maybe a little bit more.
And some of these other topics that you guys have been able to, not only through the,
of course, the Farmers Almanac, but even with the website and other ways.
It's great to hear and it's also great to hear of how I think that, you know, especially
your core fans out there, you could keep putting out a very similar publication every year
and going to buy it, to be honest.
The fact that you guys work so hard to improve things, to tinker with things, to make them
right just shows how much not only you care about the job, but how good you are at it.
But how much you're listening to people in your readers, that's really cool to hear
and see.
And I always like to think of the Almanac as this mix of, you know, the history of what
it is and what it began as, you know, with those weather forecasts, those left hand calendar
pages with all that information of, you know, the sun rise and set times, the moon rise
and set times, the tides.
So, you know, we want to keep that, that what the beginning of the Almanac was, you've
got to keep that piece of what our founder Robert B. Thomas really started because, you
know, he was onto something obviously, you know, getting from 1792 to now is there's a reason
behind that.
So, we want to, but we also want to give people that information, whether at the newest tomato
variety that they want to plant, or, you know, the history of, you know, honey, like in
this one, you know, a look back at the 1941 baseball season with Joe Demagio's 56 game
hit streak, and Ted Williams hitting 406, you know, there's, there's that mix of new and
relevant and historical and information that you may have known before, never known, or
something that you just want to learn about.
Tim, I would waste a time machine and go back to one of those Yankees Red Sock games to
see those two play.
I tell of you that it's a great, I look forward to that, that kind of work and reading
some of that.
I have a bit of an audible I want to throw out yet, too, though, because I hadn't thought
of this beforehand, but as we're talking about it and hearing your passion about this
and working there, Tim, you know, I mentioned before that WFHR getting ready to celebrate
85 years.
When I come into the building here that I've been coming into for quite a few years
and been working in radio for over 20, I am inspired by the people that paved the way,
the people that got this whole thing started and the work that we get to do because of
those people and how much it means to be a part of this and a small part of it, but just
a small humble part of this 85 years that we've been able to do this in radio and that radio
is still relevant, to be honest, that we're still here, we're doing this, it feels good
and we appreciate the community supporting us.
And then I think about the old Farmers Almanac and how long that's been around.
And I can hear it in your voice.
You take a lot of pride and you really enjoy being able to work for this publication,
don't you?
I really do.
I mean, you know, I'd love to take a time machine and go back and sit down with Robert
Thomas to just see what he was thinking, what was going through his brain as he developed
this idea for the Almanac.
You know, when Almanac wasn't new at that point, there was, in fact, there was way more
Almanac than there are now, you know, because people didn't travel very far.
So they were, you know, the every little county in town and area had their own Almanacs,
you know, Ben Franklin had his own Almanac.
So, you know, I'd love to just see like what he was thinking when he's developing this
idea and how he decided to make it a little bit different.
Yeah.
The history of it is great.
I mean, I have a history of it in, you know, from my childhood.
I remember seeing that yellow cover in my aunt's house.
You know, she had this, you know, rocking chair with this little circular magazine rack next
to it.
And I remember seeing it there every year.
So it was a part of my childhood.
But you know, the thing is that it's been a part of so many people's childhood throughout
the years.
You know, the thing that has made the Almanac endure all this time is the fact that,
you know, grandparents have read it to their grandchildren.
And parents have had it in their house and their kids have picked it up.
You know, the, there's a reason why we still have younger readers and keep getting more,
you know, a bigger audience because of that fact that people are sharing it with the next
generation.
So, yeah, there's, there's so much to Almanac, you know, the, the thought that this started,
you know, 16 years after the founding of America and it's still here.
It's never missed a year where the oldest continuously published periodical in North America.
You know, it started with 3000 copies in the first year, went to 9,000 copies in the second
year.
Now we distribute two and a half million copies a year.
Amazing history.
And well said.
Thank you.
We're speaking with Tim Goodwin, senior editor of the Old Farmer's Almanac.
Tim, can you tell us about anything that might be new in this year's edition?
Yeah.
I mean, it's outside of, you know, I mean, you think of those pages that are there year
after year.
And so, you know, we're talking about the new pages, but that data is all brand new.
You know, we have our, you know, planting by the moon cycle, the best days have been updated.
A lot of great features, you know, like I, you know, I mentioned that, that look back at
the 1941 baseball season.
We've got this great story about, it's called landleadies and that's about these long
established gardens who were designed by women, you know, way back in the early, you know,
1900 from all, you know, in New York and Washington, D.C., we've got a couple great farming
stories in there, you know, about how farmers are trying to diversify and really find new
ways to bring in income, great story on space trash, you know, all the stuff that we put
up there for all this great technology we have, you know, has an impact, you know, that
we don't see day in day out, you know, great tomato recipes from our recipe contest.
We got so many entries this year, tomatoes are our king when it comes to vegetable gardening.
So we knew it was going to be popular, but the amount that we got was incredible.
We got to taste some of them and test them.
Just so many great things for there, you know, just to the north talking to Canadian farmers
who are really focusing on their soil, you know, we look back at the pandemic and gardening
took a huge jump at that point, but so did houseplant.
People were stuck at home.
They needed things to keep them busy and what great, you couldn't see people, so bring
in a new houseplant, just, you know, so many wonderful stories and really well thought
out by these writers that we have.
One story I really liked was gardening like it's 1776, you know, really looked at how
gardens began back then, you know, with the founding of our country and how, you know,
how different and how similar they are to today.
You know, we think of gardening now as we put some plants in the ground, if they work
great.
Back then, you were planting a garden to feed your family for the year.
So, you know, looking at these kitchen gardens of full of herbs and vegetables and even flowers
mixed in, you know, how simple they were, but so functional, you know, making sure you
had a good quality fence to keep out the wildlife, you know, fruit trees and dairy bushes nearby.
So just in looking at the vegetables that were planted at that time, you know, like things
a lot of root vegetables, like, you know, beets and carrots and parsnips and turnips, you
know, onions, garlic, there's, I mean, I could sit here and talk to you for a couple
of hours and not even scratch the surface.
Yeah, we got to add salesman to your title, Tim, because you sold us.
I were intrigued.
There's so many good things there and so many things that I am going to be bookmarking
and making sure I come back and make sure reading, because I cannot wait for this new
addition to come out.
Tim, I would not be doing my journalistic integrity if I didn't ask you a couple
tough questions.
I got two of them for you.
We'll let you go.
Do you have a favorite part of the Almanac?
I cannot imagine how difficult that's got to be the answer.
Yeah, you know, it's hard because I do have my hands on so many things, but what I take
a lot of pride in and there's not a lot of, you know, like words involved in it, but
it's those left hand calendar pages, you know, those are really the heart of what the
Almanac are.
You know, people couldn't get that information really anywhere else when the Almanac started.
You know, they looked at it for, you know, those times of, you know, when the sun would
rise and set, you know, thinking about their gardens, you know, those kind of, like,
you know, some people may just flip past those and not really think too much about them,
but those left hand calendar pages, the planting by the moon phases, like those are just
so integral and the piece of the fabric of what the Almanac is.
So, like, I love having my hands on those pieces because it's simple information.
You're just looking over data, but it's stuff that people really have been so useful
to so many people over the years.
They may not use it the same way.
They used it, you know, when the Almanac started or early on, but the fact that those pages
have endured and have gone through, you know, changes of the editorial staff, the lead
editors, the publishers, that those have stayed and remained.
It just, it just fascinates me how important they have been.
Agreed.
I couldn't not agree with you more and very, very well done.
We're looking forward to that.
And one more for you, Tim, anything you can tease about this year, so we certainly don't
want to give anything away, but anything you can tease about it.
I got to try Tim.
I have to ask.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, something that has been a part of the Almanac since very beginning is what
is called the Man of the Science, you know, it's linked to astrology and how different
body parts are, you know, tied in with different astrological signs.
It's really interesting.
It's kind of a look back of where this began and how it's come to be to where it is now.
Really, really interesting.
I love the story about the secrets of the sugar bush and how, you know, the forests
and these blocks of maple, sugar maples have been such a big piece of, you know, some Native
American, you know, cultures early on and how it's led to now, you know, one of the biggest
crops here in the Northeast where we're located.
If you've never heard of a pingo, you'll love the story.
It's fascinating.
Mary Pickerskill, it's a name that you may not know, but if you read the story in the
Almanac, you will realize that she has been a part of your life more than you could imagine.
Can that wait Tim?
Really looking forward to it.
When and where can people get a copy of the old farmer's Almanac?
Yep.
It just came out, you know, towards the end of August.
So it's in books where books and magazines are sold.
If you can't find it, you know, in your local grocery store or local bookstore, go to
almanac.com slash where to buy.
You can put in your area.
It'll give you a list of retailers in your, you know, in that vicinity.
You can buy it through our website if you'd rather have it shipped right to your home.
Amazon as well.
We just cracked the top 100 in books right off the bat.
So something we're really proud of and something we, they're, they're a huge seller for us.
Congrats to you and the team on that.
That's wonderful.
And I didn't get to say it earlier.
Congrats on the promotion too.
It's part of why we're getting to talk to you.
Would really enjoy talking with you Tim.
You guys got to come back next year.
We got to do this again.
I really enjoyed this conversation.
Thank you so much for the time.
Absolutely.
And yes, you know, next year is great.
You know, our garden guide comes out, you know, towards the end of January, early February.
So, you know, for all your listeners who love gardening and farming, that's right up
their alley.
So that would be another great way to tie into what the Almanac does and how important it
is to, you know, the people who love to get their hands into the soil.
Yeah.
Tim, see, you're doing too good of a job.
You got to come back.
We have to have you come back.
I think we have you guys try to get you back in January or something to talk about that
and promote that and we'll remind everybody about the Almanac and bring you back for
a new, when the new addition comes out as well.
And again, thank you for the time.
Tim, if people have follow up questions one and a more, should we just send them to the
website, Almanac.com?
Yep.
We can go to Almanac.com.
There's a lot of great information there, more than, you know, we can put in the book.
You can also go to Almanac.com slash contact us.
If you have questions for us about something in the book, you want to say how great it
is.
You have a question about something.
You know, that's another way those questions come to us and are answered by, you know, our
editorial staff.
So, you know, we love engaging with our readers because they're the reason we're still doing
this.
They're the reason that we can't continue still doing this.
So, you know, it's important to engage with people and want to know what's on their mind.
Yeah, be sure to check it out and get yourself a copy of the 2026, 2025, 2026 Old Farmers
Almanac.
There's so much great information in there, so much waiting for you and you can find out
more and get your copy at Almanac.com.
Encourage you to do that.
Tim, thank you again for the time.
Thank you.
Have yourself a great one.
You too, James.
Thanks for having me on.
This is a pleasure.
And please say hi to the staff over there for us.
We appreciate everybody over there.
I sure will.
Thank you.
And thank you, everybody, for joining us for another edition of WFHR's Rapid Support,
proudly brought to you by Crockett Sceptic.
