Happy Leap Year! Every four years the calendar awards us with one extra day in February. Of course, we understand that this is necessary to maintain our annual cycle to stay on track with seasons and other holidays, but did you know it had huge implications for farmers as well? As long as seasons stay on track, harvests will stay on schedule too.
With weather being as unpredictable as it is, any chance farmers can get for predictability is critical to their work. Leap year is helpful because the solar year is slightly longer than the 365 days on our Western calendars. Nonetheless, it’s hard to account for a quarter of a day on a hallmark calendar, but over the years, the extra days would eventually add up and alter the entire year.
Enter leap year, here to set the calendar straight! Without it, over time, there would be a dramatic shift in seasons. Summer would become freezing and dark and vice versa. No matter what type of calendar you look at, every culture has attempted to figure out a symmetrical calendar year. Now, we follow the Western calendar giving us 365-day years with February 29th every four years.
All in all, farmers (everyone else who eats their harvest) are grateful for leap years for keeping agriculture on schedule for growing and harvesting crops on time in the right seasons. Leap year allows our dedicated farmers to grow our crops without difficulty from the uncontrollable weather and continue to harvest our favorite foods!