Even the tomatoes need a website.

I've joked with my professional colleagues more than a few times this past year that it feels like, in a lot of ways, we're moving backwards. For twenty-plus years we've been pushing everything forward - online directories replaced phone books, QR codes replaced printed menus, websites replaced (or at least tried to replicate, in their own clunky way) the experience of walking into an actual shop. And now here we are, watching some of that swing back the other direction. Funny how that works.

I don't think it's a coincidence that this is happening right as AI floods every feed with content that reads like it was written by anyone, for anyone - and therefore by nobody, for nobody. When anyone can generate a course, a newsletter, a "here are 5 tips" post in about four seconds flat, the stuff that can't be generated starts to feel valuable again. A conversation. A person who actually shows up. A booth at the farmers market.

I've felt this pull myself, more than I'd like to admit. The more digital everything gets, the more I find myself craving things that are stubbornly, inconveniently analog. So much so that I've genuinely wondered lately whether what I do - which is design digital experiences for a living - is still relevant, or if I should just give it all up and go be a farmer instead.

This existential crisis was so real that I did the unthinkable earlier this spring: I started a garden.

I want to be clear that I am not a gardener. I am, very generously, a novice, extremely first-year, please-don't-die-on-me-now gardener. A black thumb. But something got into me and now I've got heirloom tomatoes and peppers going in the backyard, and I check on them about as often as I check Slack, which is to say, quite a lot.

Here's the part that actually got me, though, and the reason I'm writing this and not just posting tomato pictures. I was out there the other day, hands in the dirt, feeling pretty smug about my little rebellion against the algorithm, when I caught myself thinking: you know, if I ever actually sold these, like, say at a farmers market, I'd totally make myself a cute little tomato website.

Not because I'd need one to look official. Because I'd want people to know which Saturday I'd actually be at the market. I'd want a way to text the neighbors when a new batch of peppers came in. I'd want the people who missed me that week to still be able to grab a box. None of that has anything to do with looking legit online - it's just logistics. Even the most physical, dirt-under-your-nails business in the world still needs a digital way to say here's where I am and here's how to get some.

Even out there, doing the most analog, unplugged, back-to-the-land thing I could think of. My brain still drifted to the internet.

Because - surprise! - even the tomatoes need a website 🍅