Farmer designers, agriculture on the move

We are constantly struggling to condense time, this time that could be our tuning fork. We forget the rhythm of the seasons, which the thousand-year-old trees beside us remind us of. The Japanese have a word in their vocabulary to express the nostalgia of the passing seasons and our grandparents had an almanac to memorize the events and the passage of seasons.


© madd-bordeaux

The word almanac comes from the Arabic al-munâkh, which means climate or a moment in time. With the Bible, the almanac is one of the most printed books. An indispensable companion for the farmer, it provided all the information necessary for the work in the fields: lunar calendar, festivals, dates and places of the markets, vegetable and horticultural advice, tables of decimal measures, information on new machines etc. This annual and often regional publication collected all the comments of its owner, thus preciously preserved from year to year: dates of sowing and harvesting, varieties of seeds used, weather indications etc. The simple events of daily life and private life were also recorded. Sometimes containing tales, jokes and elements of general culture, the almanac accompanied the life of the family throughout the year.

All these almanacs have been generously loaned by the Mériadeck library in Bordeaux.