On pumpkins, putting down my phone, and making a little more room for the life happening right in front of me.

There are pumpkins sitting in a pile by the door.

They’ve been there for days.

We’re busy getting ready for winter, and there are approximately 137 things that need to happen before the frost comes. We’re preparing the spaces for the Winter Shop, moving tables, cleaning shelves, hauling boxes, deciding what stays and what needs to go somewhere else for a few months. The farm has begun its annual shuffle toward winter.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I realized I hadn’t put pumpkins on the porch.

Normally, I’d probably think, Well, there’s no time for that.

The wreaths will be coming in soon anyway. The pumpkins won’t last once the frost really settles in. They’ll only have their little moment before they’re replaced by evergreen and cedar and the smell of Christmas.

But this year, we’re putting them out anyway.

They might only get to sit there for a couple of weeks.

And that’s okay. The joy it will bring to the kids and our front door- is worth it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately.

Especially the way I’ve spent my time on social media.

It’s a bittersweet thing for me to say, because social media has given me so many wonderful things. It has introduced me to people I never would have known, allowed me to share pieces of this farm with people all over the country, and helped build this little corner of the internet that has become Hearty Sol.

I’ve loved it.

And I’ve been tired by it.

Both things can be true.

For a long time, I got very good at making things look quick.

A project that took me three days became a two-minute video. A garden that took months to grow became a thirty-second before-and-after. A recipe that involved dirty dishes, grocery lists, children walking through the kitchen and somebody inevitably asking where the scissors were became a neatly edited little moment where everything looked rather effortless.

And I began hearing something over and over again.

“You make me feel like I’m not doing enough.”

At first, I didn’t quite know what to do with that.

Because that was never what I wanted.

Never.

If anything, I’ve always wanted this place to be an encouragement. I wanted you to see the old table I dragged home and think, Maybe I could do something with that. I wanted you to see the garden and feel like you could grow something, too. I wanted you to make the bread, plant the flowers, hang the laundry, paint the wall, make the soup, try the thing you’ve been thinking about trying.

I never wanted you to look at my life and think you needed to catch up to it.

And yet, I understand why you might.

Because a two-minute video doesn’t show the two days before it.

It doesn’t show the project sitting half-finished for a week because somebody needed a ride somewhere. It doesn’t show the laundry piled on the chair. It doesn’t show the email I forgot to answer. It doesn’t show the nights I went to bed thinking about all the things I didn’t get done.

It doesn’t show the ordinary.

And ordinary is most of life.

I’ve been pulling the tripod out less and less lately.

Partly because I’m tired of filming.

But mostly because I’ve realized something: I don’t always want to be the director of my own life.

Sometimes I just want to make something.

I want to work in the garden without stopping to find the right angle. I want to paint a piece of furniture without thinking about the before-and-after. I want to cook dinner without remembering to photograph it. I want to sit on the porch when the light is beautiful instead of thinking about whether I should go get my phone.

I want to finish a project and have the satisfaction belong entirely to me.

Not to the camera.

Not to the algorithm.

Not to a little red notification.

Just to me.

And there is another thing I’ve noticed.

My friends stopped coming over to see what was new around here.

Because they already knew.

They had seen it. They had watched it happen through a screen. They knew what I’d been making and what I’d been working on because I’d already shown them.

And somewhere along the way, I think I lost my appetite for sharing a little bit.

Not because I don’t love sharing.

I do.

But because I began to miss the pleasure of having something that hadn’t been seen yet. Something that could be discovered over a cup of coffee. Something a friend could walk through the door and say, Oh my goodness, what did you do here?

There is something wonderful about being surprised by someone’s life.

And there is something wonderful about having a little bit of your own life that belongs only to you.

So I’ve been putting the phone down more.

Not perfectly.

Although, if we’re being honest, I’m not exactly starting from a place of great technological attachment. Over the past year, there have been plenty of times my mom has had to call the landline just so I could wander around the house listening for my phone because I had no idea where I’d left it.

I’m apparently very good at putting my phone down.

The problem is remembering where.

But I’ve started noticing something else, too.

I notice adults sitting next to their children in the dentist’s office, both of them looking at separate screens, barely acknowledging that they’re sitting beside one another.

Two people who love each other, occupying the same three feet of space, but living somewhere completely different.

And I find myself wondering what we’re missing.

I’ve felt it when traveling, too.

The past few years of traveling through Europe, I’ve found myself noticing more and more people who have spent an enormous amount of money and time to get somewhere truly extraordinary, only to experience it through their phones.

I’ve watched people travel to the most remote corners of Italy or Germany, stand in front of an ancient castle rising through the mist, and immediately hold up a screen between themselves and the thing they came all that way to see.

And I get it.

I have done it, too.

We want the photograph. We want proof that we were there. We want to remember it.

But sometimes I wonder if, in our effort to capture the moment, we miss the actual moment.

You traveled all that way to see the castle in the mist.

You could have technically seen a photograph of it from home.

Heck, if you really wanted to, you could probably cast yourself in front of a misty castle with AI now.

But you didn’t travel there for a picture.

You traveled there to feel something.

To stand in the cold. To smell the rain. To hear the church bells. To look up and realize just how small you are. To be somewhere you have never been before.

That’s what travel is for.

That’s what a concert is for.

That’s what dinner with friends is for.

We go to experience things.

Not simply to capture them.

And maybe that’s part of what I’ve been craving.

Experience without documentation.

Creativity without an audience.

A beautiful moment that doesn’t need to become a post.

A little corner of my life that nobody else has seen yet.

So this isn’t really a story about me suddenly becoming a woman who has mastered the art of being unreachable.

It’s much simpler than that.

I’m just trying to be more intentional about when I pick it up.

And this is my little encouragement to you, too.

If you’ve been wondering how to spend less time on your phone, maybe it doesn’t have to start with deleting every app or making some grand declaration.

Maybe it starts with putting the phone in a drawer for an afternoon.

Just an afternoon.

Let yourself be bored.

I promise, the world is still there.

And it is astonishing how quickly the world gets bigger when the rectangle isn’t in your pocket.

You begin noticing the light coming through the window. The sound of the furnace kicking on. The smell of something cooking. The fact that your child has gotten taller. The neighbor’s leaves blowing across the yard. The half-finished project sitting on the workbench. The pumpkins you almost didn’t put on the porch.

Maybe if I’m putting my phone down a little more, someone else might just be able to start smelling the flowers again, too.

There is so much life happening when we’re not looking down.

And I’m trying to look up more.

This will probably mean you’ll see less of me over on the socials.

I hope you don’t mind.

I’m not going anywhere.

I’m just trying to leave a little more of my life unshared.

And perhaps, in doing so, encourage you to leave a little more of yours unshared, too.

Because you don’t have to document a beautiful moment for it to count. You don’t have to make something into content for it to be creative. You don’t have to accomplish something every afternoon for the afternoon to have been worthwhile.

You don’t have to keep up with anyone.

Not even me.

Especially not me.

So yes, we’re putting the pumpkins on the porch.

They won’t be there long.

The frost will come.

The pumpkins will have their little season, and then the wreaths will move in.

And that’s alright.

The Winter Shop is coming, too.

This year, we’re changing things up a little. Mark your calendars- we’ll be open November 6 and 7, and we will no longer be open on Sundays.

There will be fresh handmade wreaths, Christmas trees, handmade Hearty Sol goods, seasonal gifts and hot cider, as always.

I’ll share more details and Winter Shop updates here as we get closer. Feel free to subscribe to our weekly emails so you get all the Winter Shop details as they come out.

But for today, I’m going to put my phone down.

There are pumpkins that need a porch, volleyball games to watch and supper to start.

A life that needs living.

Maybe yours does, too.

I hope you make the day great! Cheers!