This homestead update will be a little different than usual. First, I wanted to share an article that unsettled me and pierced me with conviction regarding my technology usage.

From Feeding Moloch to Digital Minimalism by School of the Unconformed.

I strongly encourage you to read it. The statistics she quotes are harrowing: enough to make me look at my toddler and realize he watches me stare into my phone much more than I would like. I think of the technological landscape he’ll have to navigate as he gets older, and I realized my modeling isn’t setting him up to deal with it well.

It also reminded me that our use of technology is not spiritually neutral. It either hinders us in becoming more Christ-like, or aids us on our path to sanctification. And my passive scrolling has not helped me become holier.

So I’m on a tech detox, and it’s been great. I’ve felt more present, more grounded, more whole than I have in a long time. I have many thoughts that will probably make their way into a future blog post. But until then, I simply encourage you to read the article above, and put your phone down a bit more.

I recognize the irony of writing about tech detoxing on an online platform, where it’ll be linked across social media. I’m not quite anti-technology, but I do believe its insidious presence in every facet of our lives is not as harmless as it may appear. The older I get, and the more I see the effects of technology on my generation and the generations after, the more I understand the Luddite movement and agree with Wendell Berry.

I have been filling my reclaimed hours with reading and gardening and music and making. We’re all still on the very end of our colds, but thankfully the brain fog has lifted.

My dear friend from college was in the area for a work conference, and spent Friday through Saturday with us. It was lovely to catch up, eat good food, play board games, go to thrift stores, and laugh together after nearly 6 years of being apart.

Our two shipments of bees came in, and my dad and I did the “bee drop” to put them into their new hives on Sunday evening. Jake was amazing and took photos for me.

The bees come in wooden boxes with the queen in a separate compartment. We prep the new hives and carefully remove the queen compartment from the wooden box without letting the other bees out.

We replace the cork stopper in the queen compartment with a marshmallow and set her in the new hive. Then, we open the wooden box and gently shake the bees out into their new home.

The bees quickly get to work exploring their new home and eating through the marshmallow to free their queen, while my dad and I put the finishing touches on their hive and make sure they’re nice and comfortable.

This brings our total number of hives to four. They seem to be healthy and thriving, and we’re hoping for a robust honey harvest this year. Bees are such fascinating, beautiful creatures…I could sit in front of the hives and watch them dance forever.

Michael and I picked up a flat of fresh strawberries from our local stand and canned eight half-pints of strawberry jam. As I hulled the berries, he stood next to me with his head tilted back and mouth open, waiting for me to feed him pieces of strawberry.

As I was cooking down the berries, he was being awfully quiet. I then realized the table is no longer a safe place out of his reach.

We still have quite a few berries, and for our next batch I may try out an alternative pectin that requires less sugar.

In knitting news, I’m enjoying this simple DK sock pattern by A Wooden Nest. I needed something simple and practical and easy on my hands as I continued to recover from this cold. I finished a pair for Jake, and now I’m starting my own pair. For Jake’s, I used KnitPick’s Stroll Tweed held double in Sequoia colorway.

I’ve taken to sitting on the porch in the mornings while I drink my coffee and Michael plays. The oak tree sways in the breeze, and the killdeer hops across the driveway, and the red tail hawk calls in the distance, and the morning sun crawls across my lap with its Midas touch. It brings to mind one of my favorite poems: the Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry

Current Reads/Listens

• Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry
• The Essential Writings of Mother Maria Skobtsova
• Who Stole the Soul? The Lord of Spirits podcast
• The Hermits, the Heroes, and the Hearth by Pilgrims in the Machine