In response to the heart-tugging film Steve and Bryan had made a few months back, using the Red Blooded edition as a Valentine, Aaron wanted to show the grittier, seedy underbelly side of things, with help from the “anything but cute” Portland-based heavy metal band Red Fang and their tour manager Coyle.

Our latest offering, the “National Crop” Edition, returns to FIELD NOTES’ agricultural roots with six notebooks in a custom-made box with a big poster and a embroidered patch for your overalls. It’s available by the box, while they last, or as part of a FIELD NOTES COLORS subscription.

You’ll also want to watch our new film “FROM SEED” featuring Aaron Draplin cheerfully ramblin’ on about his huge collection of vintage notebooks that inspired FIELD NOTES.

If all that isn’t enough to get you way-damn-excited about pocket notebooks, we finally got serious and posted a huge-ass gallery featuring more than 300 books from Aaron’s collection.

Apologies if we’re belaboring the point, but “National Crop” sales are going strong, and when they’re gone, they’re gone, stock up while you can!

Summer. Cars. The “License Plate Game.” Holiday Inn Swimming Pools. Pecan Logs. FIELD NOTES. It’s time to start planning your summer road trip and we can help make it great with our new ROAD TRIP KIT.

Above, we map a 1700-mile drive from the Field Notes Midwest HQ to the unbelievably beautiful Sedona, Arizona. Our route passes through Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona–six mighty fine states. Wouldn’t it be great to document the trip, state-by state, in a series of Field Notes “County Fair” notebooks? Here’s your chance! Even if you’re not hitting the road, you’ll find plenty of great uses for notebooks featuring your favorite six states.

Each ROAD TRIP KIT includes an 80-page Field Notes Steno notebook for pre-trip planning, ANY SIX individual county Fair State editions (you’ll get an email asking you to select six states after you place your order), six Field Notes Brand #2 Woodgrain pencils, and other goodies.

Grab the atlas from under your passenger seat, fill up the tank, and order today! The Field Notes Brand ROAD TRIP KIT is just $26.95 and it’s shipping right now.

April 25, 2012

Howdy, Field Notes Crew,

It started innocuously enough; I ordered my first 3-pack and knew I’d be getting something awesome, and you didn’t disappoint; I was in love. Should I go all in for the Colors subscription? Hell yes, so I signed up for the National Crop Edition.

But nooo, you couldn’t just stop with taking my money; now you gotta start taking my spare time as well.

See, I started collecting past editions, and I finally got my hands on some “Fire Spotters.” Aww, yeah. Your lovely page about the Fire Spotter Edition was a thing of beauty. And damn you, there were LINKS on that page. People click those links, y’know. So I learned about fire spotters, and the history of the towers. I read Young Men and Fire, and read the instruction manual for the Osborne Fire Finder. The spark caught hold… and now I’ve signed up to be a volunteer fire spotter in Angeles National Forest this summer. Orientation starts next week, and I couldn’t be more excited. When my friends ask me how the hell I came up with this crazy idea, I just say, “See, there are these incredible notebooks…”

Thanks for the adventures I haven’t even had yet. Love you guys.

Lee Coleman
San Gabriel, CA

We’ve got (at least) two former Boy Scouts and two current motorscooterists working here at the Midwest HQ, so it was only a matter of time before we put out a FIELD NOTES patch. The new (and limited) “Crop Edition” (and its accompanying triangular embroidered emblem) is out in the wild, and we’re starting to see some action on Flickr. We’re especially excited to see where the patches are going. Get sewing, load your Argus C3 with some Verichrome, and post your photos in the FIELD NOTES in Action Flickr pool or email ‘em to crew(at)fieldnotesbrand(dot)com. We’ll choose a couple favorites and send out care packages.

FIELD NOTES COLORS seasonal 3-Packs are sold in limited quantities and they have a tendency to sell out almost immediately after they’re announced on our email list (sign up at the top of the left column!). With that in mind, we’ve introduced a subscription model, giving those who want first crack at each of our limited-edition releases (and who didn’t want to camp out in front of a browser, hitting refresh) a simple method to guarantee delivery of a year’s worth of new COLORS as they’re released. Check this quick film on recent seasonal editions.

Start your COLORS subscription right now with the just-announced “National Crop Edition” Box Sets and you’ll be all set.

Angela of Vancouver just snagged the very last COLORS subscription starting with our Winter release, The Northerly Edition. We’re deep into production of the Spring edition and can say it is totally different than anything we’ve ever done before. If you’d like to make sure you get yours when it’s released (subscribers to our mail list will, as always, get first crack) you can start a COLORS subscription sight unseen right now.

We’ve added the hand-letterpressed “Red Blooded” graph paper memo books to our standard line up, just in time for Valentine’s Day. And of course, we made a little film about them. Get some for your main squeeze.

Chris Adamiak of Damn Yak Dry Goods up in Canada let us know about FIELD NOTES’ role in a great DIY restoration project: his sister-in-law’s father’s Estwing claw hammer. In an age where just about everything is disposable, the amount of work and love that Chris put into restoring this hammer (which coulda been replaced for eight bucks) is remarkable. The finished product is worth well more than the sum of its parts, it’s a showpiece of a family’s history, and hopefully will be cherished for generations. When we see people like Chris using FIELD NOTES, we know we’re getting into the right hands.

What the Field Notes Brand Corporate Grain Elevator would look like, if there ever were such a thing. From the LoC archives.