March 4, Monday — P.T. Barnum purchased "Jumbo," 1882. Stick to your winter flannels until they stick to you.
March 5, Tuesday — Last quarter moon. Prune to discourage growth, today and tomorrow.
March 6, Wednesday — Moon at descending node. Davy Crockett killed at the Alamo, 1836.
March 7, Thursday — St. Perpetua. Alexander Graham Bell patented telephone, 1876.
March 8, Friday — Moon runs low. Conjunction of Mercury and Uranus. Begin logging.
March 9, Saturday — Marriage of Napoleon and Josephine, 1796. False teeth patented, 1822.
March 10, Sunday — Conjunction of Neptune and the moon. Astrologically favorable to begin a diet to lose weight.
Ask The Old Farmer's Almanac: Can I use freshly picked culinary sage, or should I dry it first? — G.H., New York, N.Y.
Answer: Fresh sage (Salvia officinalis) is terrific in a variety of culinary uses, but it doesn't taste the same as dried sage. In either case, harvest only young leaves; older, larger ones will have toughened and lost much of their flavor.
Begin harvesting in spring after an early, vigorous pruning of the plant. (For dried sage, it's best to harvest the leaves just after the plant has flowered.) Continue on through the season until early fall. By September or so, stop harvesting and allow the plant to toughen before winter.
Although fresh leaves are too coarse and furry to eat whole, you can stuff sprigs in the cavity of poultry before roasting, or use them as an attractive garnish. To get the most flavor from fresh sage, however, the young leaves should be well chopped or minced. This will bring out the pleasant, aromatic, sometimes lemony taste. If you dry the leaves, they take on a heavier, pinelike taste, similar to rosemary. You can use fresh or dried sage in poultry stuffings, herb breads or casseroles; it's just a matter of personal taste.
Traditionalists may prefer dried sage with Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday meals, but try fresh sage in a cassoulet (lamb and white beans), with pork chops or in light pasta dishes such as a lemony linguini with shrimp. Salvia officinalis is also the sage used in old home remedies for everything from gingivitis (bad breath) to body odor and baldness. Herbalists recommend medicinal teas made with sage for canker sores, tonsillitis and asthma. Native Americans used a sage poultice on the chest for asthma, plus sage tea for 40 days. For a sore throat, a warm gargle made with an infusion of sage leaves can be very comforting.
Ask The Old Farmer's Almanac: My town has just switched to pay-per-bag dumping. What can you tell me about the old backyard barrel incinerators? —S.T., Windham, Maine
Answer: Check with your town and state codes about backyard burning regulations, but even if it's allowed, use extreme caution about what you choose to burn. Although in decades past the screened-top barrel incinerators were once used on many farms and may have been as practical as the compost and scrap heaps, today's inks, dyes, plastics and other synthetics have changed the picture. Even without burning any paints, grease or known hazardous household wastes, it is estimated that a week's worth of one family's incinerated waste-junk mail, magazines, newspapers, food containers "can put as much toxic chemicals (such as dioxin and furans) in the air as a well-controlled municipal incinerator burning the trash from thousands of homes," according to one environmental team of experts. Resist the urge to save on your dump fees by burning wastes. Most items that you can burn safely can also be recycled, which is a better option environmentally and will still reduce your dump fees.
Ask The Old Farmer's Almanac: How did people answer a call when telephones first became popular? — H.K., Springfield, Mo.
Answer: The word "hello," as used today, didn't really exist back in the 19th century. "Halloo" was used to hail someone from a distance — as in "Halloo! You up there on the roof!"— or to incite hounds to chase, but it was not used as a greeting. Thanks to the discovery of a letter buried for more than a hundred years in AT&T's archives, we now believe that the word originated with Thomas Edison and the telephone he invented. Edison suggested using "Are you there?" or "Are you ready to talk?" to start a conversation on his phones. His rival, Alexander Graham Bell, was insisting on "Ahoy!" as the preferred greeting. In a letter to a colleague, Edison wrote, "I don't think we shall need a call bell, as 'hello' can be heard 10 to 20 feet away." From then on, "hello" became the recommended greeting in telephone operating manuals.
Send your questions to: Ask the Almanac, The Old Farmer's Almanac, Main St., Dublin, NH 03444; Web site: www.almanac.com