Grit

It may be that there were just no enterprising kids in your area to sell the paper, @Beth Gallagher . It was actually the opposite of a local paper, because it was all printed at wherever their home company and printing office was, and then shipped out to the delivery boys, wherever they lived.
So, a person in California would be reading the exact same news stories as a person in Tennessee, or in Florida.
They recruited sales boys by placing ads in comic books, which all kids probably read, and then (with the help of mom and dad) they signed up to deliver the paper.
I think we had to send in a check for the first batch of papers, and however many we ordered, they sent extras, so my son always had some to hand out to other houses as he was establishing his route.
Once he left them a trial issue, he would come back the next week and see if they wanted another one, and they usually did. The paper had something for everyone. Stories for the kids, recipes for mom, and things like crossword puzzles, and more.
Everything was happy and positive, and it would be a great thing to still have , except that people now days expect to have everything online and not come from a delivery boy on his Stingray bike.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't go out of my way to solicit a customer five miles off of my regular route, unless it was my grandmother or something.

 

I read all three of them.

 

I think you are talking about the Farmer’s Almanac. It came out every year, and had all of the information that you mentioned. It was small but had a lot of good information, and they were usually right about what the winter weather was going to be like.

 

I subscribed for a year. It's not the magazine that I delivered - and read - as a child, but it's okay. For one thing, the Grit that I delivered as a child may have been called a magazine, but it was actually a weekly rural agricultural and family newspaper. As it is today, Grit is better than Mother Earth News, in my opinion, but not as good as Backwoods Home. It is bi-monthly rather than weekly, which would certainly affect the topics. Bi-monthly is an odd sort of word because it can mean twice a month or once every two months, which are very different things. Grit is published every two months.

I think I prefer it to Mother Earth News because it's aimed at actual rural people rather than New Yorkers who have moved to the country and think they know everything there is to know about rural living. Perhaps for the same reason, the articles are more down to earth rather than polished. Grit includes articles that a lot of people in this forum could have written, yet are informative or otherwise interesting. The difference, perhaps, is that much of the Mother Earth News content is written by staff writers while most of the content of Grit is submitted by readers. For the most part, Grit talks about things that are doable as opposed to the stuff that requires an expenditure of thousands of dollars, such as is so often found in Mother Earth News.

Since I am procrastinating about going to work, I'll go through the September/October 2020 issue with you, from my perspective (which, of course, is one of the best perspectives available). I'll be ignoring the several recipes that are included because I'd have to try them to know whether they were any good.

Rub Some Dirt On It
The first column was written by a woman who is identified as the Group Editor, Rural Lifestyles, is about buying a home with a yard that has never been used for anything but growing grass, and transforming it into a garden, although it's mostly about battles with rabbits. Pretty much anyone who has ever started a garden could have written the article, which is not to say that it's poorly written or that it wasn't interesting. It's just easy to identify with.

Rooney The Goat
Probably submitted by a reader, it's a short story about a goat that died. High on sentiment, the article would probably turn some people off, who might say, "It's just a goat. Get over it." However, although I'm not much into goats, I know people who would have a similar reaction to the death of a cat, and I could write something similar about one of my cats. Not much to learn in this article, but it's a short read.

Keeping Kids Safe On The Homestead
As someone did with my use of the word "peon" in another post, I'm a little put off by the use of "homestead" here, when what they are describing is a farm. By definition, however, anyone with a house and a shed out back could rightfully refer to their residence as a homestead. Ignoring that, the article has some good information, particularly for someone who will be introducing children to a farm environment. Most of these are things that I was taught as a child growing up on a small farm, although I doubt my parents were working from a list. Submitted by a reader, it's informative and well-written.

Kudzu In The Kitchen
Although as far as I am aware, kudzu hasn't reached Maine yet, those of you who live in the southeastern part of the country are well aware of the invasive vine that has engulfed all of the native foliage. Submitted by a reader in Alabama, this article takes a positive approach to kudzu, demonstrating ways in which the kudzu blossoms can be used in dessert items, including jelly, sorbet, and lemonade.

Roof Replacement On Rural Buildings
A Minnesota contributor offers a fairly lengthy article discussing the options for replacing worn roofs on rural buildings, particularly the pluses and minuses relating to shingles versus metal, as well as tips on how to go about doing it.

How To Process Deer Meat At Home
Another lengthy article, which I have only skimmed, given that I don't hunt and am unlikely to ever have to process deer meat at home, it covers preparation, cleaning, aging, cutting, packaging, and even ways to use the gut pile. Oddly, what strikes me about this article is that the author refers to the meat as deer meat rather than venison and that he spells aging with an "e" as "ageing," which looks British to me. Perhaps both are regional things. I had always known the meat of a deer as venison and considered someone who referred to it as "deer meat" to be someone who wasn't aware that there was a word for that.

Do's & Don'ts of Cooking With Deer Heart
In my writing, I would do my best to avoid the pluralization of do or don't, and I have no interest in cooking or eating deer heart, so I skipped over this one. It's mostly recipes, and I have already said that I was going to skip the recipes.

Drying The Harvest
Written by a woman in Washington State, this article is about dehydrating vegetables and fruit and cooking with dried produce. It also includes a few recipes. My brief foray into food dehydration resulted in another of several kitchen appliances that are stored away in places that neither one of us can remember. Would this article help me to have more success in dehydrating fruits and vegetables? Maybe, because it sounds sensible, but I'll never know for sure.

Traversing Tricky Terrain On A Trail Horse
Although my dad raised horses and some of our cousins would come over to ride them sometimes, neither myself nor any of my siblings have learned the skill, as far as I am aware. I have tried a couple of times, and I tend to fall off a lot. That being the case, I can see that someone who has developed the skill of riding a horse might find some interest in this article. It concentrates on things like water crossings, narrow streams, dry ditches and gullies, and bridges, and I would have fallen off long before I got to any of those places.

Be Ready For Anything
As a motto, I suppose that's a good idea, but I don't think you're going to learn to be ready for anything from a four-page article. Besides, he stole the idea from the Boy Scout's "Be Prepared." Written by a guy who is probably most interested in plugging his book and blog, it discusses the importance of developing a plan, various misconceptions, and so on. It's not boring but it's more of an incentive to learn more.

Wild Rice Rewards
Perhaps the issue's longest article, it talks about harvesting wild rice in Minnesota, which sounds like a hell of a lot of work to me. Rice isn't that expensive, so I'll buy mine.

Power From The Sky
Wind power, solar power... I hate one and don't understand the other even though I have a couple of books on solar power. I'm not going to read it.

An Axe On The Upswing
This is a three-page article on restoring vintage axes. It discusses finding vintage axes, things to look for in an ax, selecting a new handle. I have only skimmed it so far but it looks interesting, so I'll go back and read it more carefully later. On second thought, I see that the article was not submitted for publication, but was excerpted and used with permission from a book. If I decide that I'm interested, I'll buy the book, but probably not.

A Pear By Any Other Name
Written by someone from Pennsylvania, the three-and-a-half page article discusses the benefits of Asian pears, and I think the Chinese have far too much influence in the world as it is, so I'll have to boycott this article.

Building A Better Uncapping Tank
Although I would otherwise have no idea what an uncapping tank would be, from the photos I can see that it is a reference to something having to do with beekeeping, but I'm not interested enough to read it.

Prepare A Home Dairy First-Aid Kit
From the pictures, I can see that the author is not talking cows here, but goats. I'm not crazy about goats (although the baby goats jumping around are kind of cute) and I absolutely hate goat's milk. As a child, I have had experience milking a goat. I think my dad bought the damned thing for the sole purpose of torturing me, and so that he could laugh at me trying to milk it. Everyone would be in the window watching me try to milk that damned thing. I made milking attempts with that goat many times, and not once did any milk survive. I was kicked, I was bitten, I was butted, and whatever milk I was able to get was knocked out of my hands every single time. That said, let's skim this article to see what it's about. As I can see, the author has no concern for my own injuries. Maggie, from Alabama, is only concerned about the damned goat.

That's it. There is a Letters to the Editor section, but I didn't see anything interesting there, and there is a large classified section, which I have always enjoyed. It includes a lot of stuff that I might be tempted to buy but, since much of it involves calling people on the telephone or sending checks, I probably won't be buying any of it.

Today's Grit is lacking some of the family stuff that I remembered being in the newspaper that I delivered many years ago, as a child, and there's nothing here for kids.

 

I grew up on a farm, and have milked the cows with no trouble whatsoever so, yes. And, as I said, I did get milk from it, but it would kick the pail over or otherwise cause me to dump it.