Voices: Down on the farm, the days I went unplugged

GASTON, Ore. – Farmer Anthony Boutard sells organic berries, cherries, corn and beans at a farmer's market, health food chain and Portland restaurants.

Just don't ask to pay by credit card or via a smartphone app.

"I'd really like to be technologically adept, but I don't have the time," Boutard, 59, tells me "That's your life…. When you can plant a chickpea and harvest it, I'll do a Twitter."

I just returned from a several-day visit with my fellow outcast from our teen years. Back then, in the early 1970s, he studied horticulture and tended bees, while I amused myself creating audio ads at my father's radio station. We were short-haired, beanstalk-size teens with cameras draped around our necks in western Massachusetts. We left our home darkrooms occasionally to shop for rare jazz records and attend old movie revivals.

We found plenty to talk and laugh about.

Boutard followed his passion for growing things by buying the 144-acre Ayers Creek Farm here, an hour west of Portland, which he runs with wife Carol. I pursued journalism, video and photography.

I live in a home today with four computers, two TVs, high-speed Internet repeaters for multiple rooms, 4 DSLR cameras, five hard drives on my desk with over 15 terrabyte's worth of storage – and smartphone apps that ring with alerts all night long.

Boutard has a small TV, but no reception. He does own a computer, but there's no website for his popular farm and no Facebook page – or even high-speed Internet. He replies to e-mails occasionally, hampered by the slow speed of his 5600 baud dial-up modem. He's hard to reach: He's out in the fields from morning to night, and he leaves his ancient flip phone in the kitchen.

I argued that a smartphone would be a lifeline for him. He could answer e-mail anywhere, always be accessible to customers and wouldn't have to deal with pokey dial-up service. He could plug the Square reader into his phone and take credit card purchases in seconds, just like his fellow merchants at the Hillsdale Farmer's Market in Portland, where he and Carol have been a Sunday fixture for 15 years.

But he doesn't want to be bothered.

And after spending several days on the farm, I had to wonder who had the right approach.

I had left my iPhone in the car when we came to visit, and even though I had the nagging itch to check for messages every 15 minutes or so – it felt so strange not to – the urge eventually started to subside.

At dinner, we sat around the kitchen table talking to one another (gasp), avoiding the all-too-standard urban scene of people at a table looking down at their phones.

Who was the smarter one? I wondered. The guy who has become a slave to sitting in front of the 27-inch iMac every night, or the one who washes his hands after a long day picking beans and relaxes by re-reading classic Mark Twain stories?

Sure, he admitted, a website or Facebook page with basic contact info would make sense for the farm – if he had the time to do it. "I'd rather plot out how to plant a new bean."

He's not totally tech free. Google the farm, he suggests, and the search engine lists the address and phone number in first position. "Anyone who wants to find me, can," he says.

So chalk up at least one win for tech. But the lesson – to unplug, to enjoy more of analog life, to look at dinner mates instead of the phone – will stay with me for quite some time.

At least until the next e-mail arrives.

Graham covers technology for USA TODAY from Los Angeles.