Tending to Our Digital Lives Too

Author: Farmer Kelley

As a bookkeeper and a farmer – I know how important it is to keep records carefully.

Breeding logs. Grazing rotations. Medical notes. Not because we expect something to happen tomorrow—but because tending well means thinking ahead.

As I help my mother navigate her daily life, I’ve been considering another kind of record we rarely speak about. Our digital lives.

Photos stored quietly in the cloud. Messages that hold entire seasons of our children’s voices or the last one from someone we have lost. Notes to ourselves. Passwords. Subscriptions. Bank alerts. Small pieces of modern life that live inside a device we carry in our back pocket.

If something happened to us, would the people we love know how to access what matters?

Apple has a setting called Legacy Contact on the iPhone. It allows you to designate someone you trust—a digital executor of sorts—who can access your account and data after your death. They receive a secure access key. With proper documentation, they can retrieve photos, messages, and important information without unnecessary legal hurdles.

It’s simple. Quiet. Practical.

And yet it feels tender.

Because choosing a digital executor is not just about passwords. It’s about trust. It’s about asking, “Who would I want holding this part of my life?”

We prepare wills for property. We organize important papers.

But in this season, so much of our story lives digitally. Thousands of photographs. Years of correspondence. Pieces of family history.

On the farm, we mend fences before storms. We mark gates clearly so no one is left guessing. Not from fear—but from care.

Setting up a legacy contact feels the same to me.

It is one more way of lifting the weight from the shoulders of those who will walk through grief. One less locked door. One less frantic search.

These conversations may feel heavy or irrelevant, but I’ve come to see them as acts of love.

We cannot control when our season changes.

But we can leave the barn in order.

If you haven’t yet explored your phone’s legacy settings, perhaps this is a gentle nudge. Not urgent. Not alarming. Just thoughtful.

Because tending well includes tending to what we leave behind.

With steadiness,

Farmer Kelley

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