Praying With the Birds Miss Rachel Shrader I am convinced that every human being should have a hobby he’s completely fanatical about. A person needs a hobby that draws him totally outside himself, that commands his attention so thoroughly that he has no chance to slip into meditations on his own feelings, problems, and sorrows. […]| Hearth & Field
Dark Rye Poppyseed Sourdough Bread Skip the Chatter — Take Me to the Recipe Hearty but comforting, pronounced yet balanced, this rye sourdough will not disappoint. It may possibly even win young kids over to the pleasures of rye bread. (Possibly.) It is particularly nice served with soup (consider perhaps our Season Straddling Vegetable). But […]| Hearth & Field
Desert Sky Rose Carroll These weeks of parched and white-hot sky Have rolled in scorching, and rolled by And left the torrid air in turn For desert trees and leaves to burn. Spring greens held shortly; darker green There followed quickly where had been So briefly blossoms, now dried pod On pod adorned the ground. […]| Hearth & Field
Preserving an Inheritance Mr. Kirk Wareham The seasons are turning, as they always are, and I am hiking in the Catskill Mountains with my seven-year-old granddaughter. We are on official business, which is to say that we are performing trail maintenance for the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference. Our job is to clear the trail […]| Hearth & Field
The opposite of chatting with an A.I. ghost is reading literature written in Latin. If the truth of this claim is not immediately obvious, dear reader, allow me to explain. It has to do with the purposes for which human beings use language.| Hearth & Field
A Journal. An Invitation. A Quest For Real Life.| hearthandfield.com
Hearth & Field recently spoke with Mrs. Carla Hanson, a fiber artist and Texan. Mrs. Hanson, who is a mother of seven children, did not herself grow up knitting or weaving, but came to the craft as an adult. She tells us below about how she has found dyeing and spinning and weaving yarn, advising customers, and building craft-based friendships to be fulfilling ways to create beauty and to connect with other people and with the natural world.| Hearth & Field
Last year, I was at a dinner party where I was chatting with a stranger. I learned she was a professor at a nearby university. “And what do you do?” she asked politely. I unexpectedly froze — how should I describe how I spend my days? For many years I was a lawyer, but I don’t practice law anymore. “I’m home with the kids,” I said after a pause, but then wondered whether that was an accurate answer. First, we’re not actually home that much, but often rather at libr...| Hearth & Field
Regarding Joy Mrs. Sofia Cuddeback Not long ago, a friend of mine called and asked if I would speak to a group of people on the topic of joy. “What is joy?” my friend asked. Is it a choice? A gift? A feeling? Usually in such a situation, my sanguine and irresponsible self quickly responds […]| Hearth & Field
Handshakes Dr. Dixie Dillon Lane Premium Subscribers Sorry, this feature is only available for H&F Print Premium subscribers. You can sign up here. (If you are already a Print Premium subscriber, be sure to click the authentication link you were sent by email so this won’t happen again.) Twice in my life, I have been […]| Hearth & Field
As we enter the year of Our Lord 2025, those educators still interested in the pursuit of wisdom may well sympathize with Tolkien’s bewildered hobbit: we may have at last reached the end of our world, and what comes next is anybody’s guess.| Hearth & Field