Be less frantic & more grounded with a . . .
Hearth & Field
Premium Subscription
Quarterly Print Collection + Upgraded Digital + Lovely Gifts
Per Month
(Need to pay less? Want to pay more? See below.)
What will I get?
- Our gorgeous quarterly print collection — four editions per year, mailed each spring, summer, autumn, & winter. (The first one is scheduled for delivery in late spring, 2024.) This is a large, beautiful, full-color, useful volume. You’ll want to keep it forever and collect them all.
- Extra & upgraded email content — such as helpful essays, exclusive interviews with contributors, poetry, recipes, gardening aids, inflation-fighting tips, et cetera. In other words, it’s like unto our standard (free) newsletter but more so.
What else will I get?
- A Hearth & Field mug. We’re having beautiful mugs made by a small pottery company in Wisconsin. We’ll send you one as soon as they’re done.
- A Hearth & Field leather bookmark. We have procured two cowhides via a leather craftsman (also in Wisconsin), who is making them into strikingly unique bookmarks, with an H&F monogram, for all subscribers (well, for at least the first two-cowhides’ worth of subscribers) .
Keep going.
All right . . . you’ll also receive:
- Occasional audio versions of select articles, read by actual human beings.
- A deeper integration into H&F’s splendid community of readers, writers, and editors.
- The unmitigated, intoxicating thrill of knowing you are helping H&F grow and expand its reach.
Is there more?
Yes.
But first, here’s the super quick-n-easy form.
(More info below the form.)
—Print Premium—
Wait — You forgot to ask me for payment information . . .
- Thanks for being honest about that.
- Actually, no payment info is needed today, and the monthly fees won’t start for a bit yet. A.K.A. buy now, pay later.
- You’ll be able to pay by check, credit card, and/or venison (see “bartering” below). We’ll follow up with you later with an invoice and instructions. We trust we can trust you for it.
What will change in the free version?
Very little. We’ll continue to send our free monthly newsletter and have hundreds of non-paywalled articles freely available on the web. A few aspects of the free newsletter may change slightly: Introductory letters from the editor might sometimes be shorter than they have sometimes been in the past, and a few little such things. We want to continue to make the free aspects of H&F widely available.
In that case, I'm happy with the free version. Why should I upgrade?
Because it will . . .
- Ground you deeper in reality. When you read about real life while seeing, smelling, touching, and hearing the rustle of the pages of our beautiful journal, you will experience everything therein with a stronger sense of presence. Take the opportunity to hold Hearth & Field in your hands and connect to it with all your senses. (Except for taste: we don’t recommend tasting our print editions. The recipes are good though.)
- Give you a lasting resource. H&F print issues are designed to be kept over time and built up into a collection, which we hope will be a deep but human-paced resource on the good and grounded life. Something to which you can refer again and again. Something to which you can direct your children. This is not some skim-it-then-scrap-it flimsy little thing — our print collections are made to be kept, offering you a lasting item to consult and treasure. Down with the throwaway culture!
- Pay for itself (in the literal sense of the word) numerous times over. We offer you perspectives, skills, and insights worth vastly more than the cost of entry. You can quickly save enormously more than that by following our articles, implementing what they suggest, embracing home production and alternative economies, and engaging in real, restorative work and leisure as outlined in our pages. You’ll also be more secure and insulated from the winds of inflation, supply train disruption, and other such fragilities.
- Direct you toward a more integrated life in which your work and your leisure and that of other members of your family are less often at odds and more often symbiotic and uniting. Every age, every vocation, every kind of work, and each of the two sexes plays a role in the vision of the good life held by H&F.
- Help you grow in virtue & excellence while resisting perfectionism. We are here to work together to develop greater focus, enjoyment, and connection with our natural world, our families and neighbors, and our God, not to place impossible burdens on ourselves or one another. We write, read, work, play, and discuss with humility, charity, and hope.
- Give you a meaningful role as regards H&F itself. Our special sections and e-mails for paid subscribers bring you into the conversation, asking for your help in refining techniques and recipes, diving further into questions brought up by previous articles and reader comments, and inviting you to participate in curated discussions with our editors and contributors so we can get to know each other better, since we can’t (alas!) just chat with you over the backyard fence. We are herein inviting you to be an active part of the Hearth & Field project.
- Engage you in supporting the broader mission. As mentioned above, we are committed to continuing to make the free components of H&F widely available — this is because there is a core missionary aspect to what we are doing, the sort of thing you cannot charge people for if you want as many people as possible to encounter it. Thus there has never been a cost. And we are ad-free. But we try to pay our writers well, there are many significant expenses in running our operations, and so on; free is not actually free. By becoming a paying Print Premium subscriber you will not only get tremendous value for yourself and your family, you’ll also help us continue the free tier for the wider world.
- Foster authentic joy. These are strange times to be alive — which makes them fairly similar to all previous times. And regardless of the times, the saints within the times seem invariably to be joyful. We do not mean inanely chipper, nor void of tears, nor blithely unaware of the suffering of a broken world (rather the opposite). But we do mean that through it all, the saints are not gloomy, not pessimistic: They are ever taken up in the calm, assuring joy that flows through all creatures who are properly oriented toward creation and its Creator. It is our hope and intent that Hearth & Field might play some small role in regularly reminding us all of that — both readers and writers — reminding us to let ourselves be taken up in this cosmic flow, this joy of the saints. For that is our real business on Earth. Per G.K. Chesterton, “Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live.”
You mentioned something about paying less or more?
So we did.
If you need to pay less:
No problem. We get it . . . these are challenging times.
We want our work to be available to anyone who is interested and might benefit from it. So if our monthly fees are untenable at this time, then simply write any reduced amount that works for you in the “Anything else we should know” form field above, and we’ll charge you accordingly. We may or may not be able to send you the printed versions (depends how things are going), but we’ll definitely make all the digital content available to you, for any amount that you’re able to pay.
Alternately: If you happen to grow or make something that seems like it might provide comparable value to an H&F subscription, why not propose a barter exchange? Beeswax candles? Venison jerky? Casks of ale? Write your proposal in the “Anything else” box, and we’ll let you know.
* * *
If you want to pay more:
Well, gosh . . . Thank you. If you’re able, and if you find more value in H&F than what we’re charging and want to help us advance our mission, then here’s an idea:
Publications nowadays always seem to offer an upscale membership tier that costs a bunch more but comes with some extra perks and a fancy name. Founders Circle. Or Platinum Club. Or Knights of Somethingoranother.
So . . . how about you make one up for yourself? Just go to the “Anything else we should know” box and write what you’d like to pay, what you’d like to receive from us in exchange, and what you’d like the subscription to be named.
For example: “$25 per month. I’d like an extra print subscription mailed to a friend. And two leather bookmarks and two H&F mugs (for when I’m reading two books and my primary H&F mug is dirty). Oh, could you also send a bookmark and mug to my aforementioned friend? I don’t want her borrowing mine. And send me a box of chocolates at some point. (Or maybe some of the venison jerky that other guy bartered.) I want to call this subscription level the Platinum Knights of Hearthfield Founding Circleclub. “
Just come up with something or another like that, write it in the “Anything else” box, and we’ll accommodate if we can.
(Or — less thinking needed — you could just copy and paste the above, if you happen to like that one. Or even just paste in its initials: PKHFC. Welcome to the PKHFC. Fancy.)
Is there anything more you guys wanted to say?
No, don’t think so. That was already rather wordy. We probably need to get back to work on Volume 1. But we’re happy to answer any questions you may have.
Incidentally, you can cancel any time. And, again, you don’t even have to pay anything yet, and ultimately you can pay whatever you want. We’ve tried to make this absolutely as easy as possible. You really have nothing to lose. And think what you can gain. (Okay, we retract the above; apparently there were more things we wanted to tell you).
The goal is to live a life of ever-deepening goodness, truth, and beauty — which, happily, means a life that is also steadier, more secure, and very likely less costly. In other words, less frantic and more grounded. Sign up today.
(Alrighty, that’s your cue — take it away. You’re on. It’s all you from here. Go ahead and scroll back up and fill out that super quick-n-easy form now. )
Thank You for Being
Part of Hearth & Field
