Farmer’s almanac

 …and what we should take from it!

You want to know for certain what the weather will be for a family vacation in summer 2011 in Kleinarl, right? You want to be sure that you will be able to spend your family vacation in the sunshine here in SalzburgerLand. That you will be able to stand atop Kleinarl’s mountains and look far into the distance, all the way to the Grossglockner in the west, the Hochkönig and Hochthron in the north, the Dachstein in the east, and the Hochalmspitze in the south…

Whether spending sunny hours biking and hiking alongside the Kleinarl Ache and Jägersee in Kleinarl, or warm evenings by the campfire and grilling with the family…I unfortunately can’t say for certain, but maybe our country lore can tell us something.

Now some might argue that proverbs are to be taken as seriously as some of the stories told about Kleinarl’s hunters, fishers, and ski instructors ;-). But even in these stories, there is (almost) always some hint of truth within, and so it is with proverbs.

Nowadays, even the younger generation have provided us with a few colorful, perhaps a little questionable proverbs of their own: “If New Year’s Eve is light and clear, the next day’ll surely be New Year” or “If the farmer is on the pot, the flies aren’t on his head:. “If the farmer is in the mood for ham, then the boar begins to limp” is also a good one. (These proverbs are rendered in English for your edification, but they do lose something in the translation!)

Also, you can’t deny a certain truth to these rules, though they definitely aren’t meant to be taken too seriously.

As a farmer’s son, I was around country lore from my early childhood, lore that would predict the weather or the effects the weather would have on the farming year. Almost half of these sayings describe how the year is likely to be, so that everything that grows on the fields and in the gardens will thrive to the best extent possible.

“March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb” reminds us, for example, that we don’t want winter to end too soon, otherwise the first plants will start to grow and then become a victim of a late frost. “Enough rain in May gives everyone enough bread and hay” speaks to the importance of sufficient rainfall in May. Most everything that grows here requires a lot of moisture. “Oswaldi (July 5) must be warm and dry, otherwise corn and wine will be expensive” tells us to hope for a warm and dry summer so that grain and wine will mature well and not spoil.

So that we can now find out the weather for your summer vacation, we must concentrate on certain days, the so-called “Lostage”.

The most important of all these days is the Seven Sleepers’ Day on 27.6. “If it rains on Seven Sleepers’ Day, it will probably stay that way for several weeks. If the sun is shining, then the summer will be a delight” is also an important proverb to bear in mind for your personal family vacation. J

If you insist on asking me how the weather will be on 27.6, I can assure you that my weather-sensitive small left toe predicts splendid summer weather for this day!

But just in case my toe happens to be mistaken this once, don’t worry. There is plenty of vacation fun here in Kleinarl in SalzburgerLand, even if the sun is hiding its smile behind the clouds.