Hawaii doesn’t exist
in pages of the Farmers’
Almanac

My 2005 edition of the Farmers' Almanac arrived, and once again Hawaii farmers were left in the lurch with no prognostication as to when the first frost will hit the green beans or which moon phase is best to plant turnips.

I don't know if Hawaii farmers even plant turnips. I don't recall seeing any in the supermarket, and I'm not sure I would recognize one if I did. But why does the country's premier publication dedicated to heartland America disregard Hawaii, which has as much heart as any other state? OK. So we don't have to worry about frost unless your garden is on the slopes of Mauna Kea, but there must be some handy farming tips that the Farmers' Almanac is keeping from island farmers. I bet they've got heaps of secret information on pineapples and sugar cane that they aren't sharing.

So I wrote to the editor, Peter E. Geiger, to find out two things: 1) Why does the Farmers' Almanac never mention Hawaii, and 2) Why, on Page 98, does the almanac recommend cooking asparagus tips for up to 15 minutes? Are they insane? (The last question relates to the asparagus tips.)

I even offered to write an article about Hawaii farming, though I concede it is somewhat out of my field (Get it? Farming out of my field?). Geiger replied courteously that "several years ago, we did print something about weather in Hawaii and Alaska, and it was well received." For a publication that has been in business since 1818, writing about something "several years ago" apparently is considered "hot off the press."

He said they haven't decided if they are going to include anything about Hawaii in the 2006 or 2007 editions of the Almanac, to which I can only advise: Get crackin'! Hell, man, the decade's almost over!

As for the cooking of asparagus tips, Mr. Geiger wouldn't budge.

"Your letter drove me to my Betty Crocker cookbook," Mr. Geiger wrote. "While the times are not exact, both Betty Crocker and we are in the same time range for asparagus tips, lima beans and carrots. I think Betty has been around 150 years and we've been around almost 200, so I'm going with what we suggest."

Well, here's a little news hot off the press: Betty Crocker has been pushing up daisies for the better part of 150 years. She's deader than a plate of overcooked lima beans. And back when she was alive, people overcooked everything just to make sure they didn't accidentally ingest a fatal biological substance.

I'm sure the Farmers' Almanac would not take the word of someone from Hawaii, which doesn't even appear on the almanac's map of America, on how to cook vegetables ("We'ums all livin' on coconuts!"). But I submit that cooking an asparagus tip 15 minutes is just short of a criminal act. The Michigan Asparagus Board, which knows a little something about asparagus, concurs. The MAB Web site specifically states that asparagus should be cooked from five to eight minutes.

If a publication can be so wrong about asparagus, you have to wonder if the Great Lakes really will get 6 to 10 inches of snow the last week of December 2005, as the Almanac predicts. Nevertheless, here's a free entry for Almanac: December 2005, Honolulu -- hot and sunny. Plant plumerias.