A transplanted Southern Californian living in North Dakota Idaho, with some insights on life with deaf dogs, a gluten free spouse, and the occasional mischievous garden gnome. Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy.





Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Pig Spleen and Weather Predictions

I'm not making this up.  I don't think I could make this up even if I wanted to.  This ran on the Grand Forks Herald website today.  Here's a link - Grand Forks Herald Article, but the links don't always work well, sometimes they want you to create an account, so I copied the article below for you, gentle reader. 


'Mean' winter forecast? North Dakotan has some spleenin' to do

Pig spleens and their height and width are how Norbert Schulz predicts the snowy season in North Dakota. This year, Schulz offered the same advice as years before: Buy a new shovel. 

By: Ben Rodgers, The Jamestown Sun 

RURAL PINGREE, N.D. – It’s not the most traditional way of predicting the weather, but one Jamestown man boasts a near-perfect record stretching back decades.

Pig spleens and their height and width are how Norbert Schulz predicts the snowy season in North Dakota. This year, Schulz offered the same advice as years before: Buy a new shovel.

“It’s going to be real nice here for a while; then she’s going to turn real mean,” Schulz said sizing up the spleen in his rural butcher shop.

He said the weather should continue to stay nice through Thanksgiving and then make a turn for cold and snow in December and January before it warms up again.
As for why to measure with the spleen, Schulz, 83, said it’s something he learned from those before him.

“I got it from the old-timers. A lot of old-timers went by the pig spleen,” Schulz said.

His son, Steven, 54, who runs the family farm now, is next in line for pig spleen predictions.

2 comments:

Mickey said...

I don't know about spleen, but I think I'll have to try out that neatloaf recipe. Of course, pig spleen could be another good gluten-free alternative to Special K for all we know, but then it would no longer be vegetarian. I'll just assume pig spleen is a better weather predictor than dinner ingredient and stick with the recipe as it is for now.

Karen said...

Well, off I go to find a pig whose spleen I can measure. I surmise the only way to ascertain the size of said spleen is to do the pig grave bodily harm, though. Sigh.