Privacy Policy

This explains what Farmstead Helper collects, why, who else ever sees it, and how to get it back or have it deleted. William Batton is responsible for the information described here.

What this covers

The hosted service at farmsteadhelper.com only.

Farmstead Helper can also be run on your own hardware under a one-time license, though that is not currently offered. We have no access to a self-hosted installation and no sight of anything in it. Whoever installed it is responsible for the data it holds, and this policy does not apply to it.

What we collect

Your account. Your name, your email address, and a hashed version of your password: we never store the password itself. Also the name you give each homestead and who else you have invited into it.

The records you enter. This is the bulk of it, and the reason the service exists: your plantings, beds, crops and varieties, animals and breeds, feed, costs, weights, harvests, egg counts, sales and the money they brought in, frost dates, and any notes you write. If you attach photographs, those too. For anyone selling produce, some of this amounts to the books of a small business, and it is treated accordingly.

Technical information. Ordinary server logs: your IP address, browser and device type, which pages you loaded and when, and errors the app hit. We keep these to run the service securely and to work out why something broke.

Counting signups. When we post a link somewhere, an advertisement or a forum post, that link carries a tag naming where it was published. If you create an account after following one, we add one to a daily tally for that tag. The tally is a date, the name of the place, and a number. It is not attached to your account and we cannot work backwards from it to you. It tells us whether a particular advertisement was worth paying for, and nothing else about your use of the service is measured this way.

Looking at every homestead together, internally. A small number of Farmstead Helper staff can see counts across every homestead at once: how many are on the free plan versus a paid one, how many people use the service in total, and, as we build the tools to measure it, which features get used. This is not the same as the anonymous signup count described above. It is built from account and billing information this page already describes holding — email addresses, plan and subscription status, who belongs to which homestead — not from anything new, and it never leaves this list of purposes. What staff see on this view is always a number or a grouping, never one homestead’s own records: the rule we build this to is that the view may look across every homestead, and may never show one. We also keep a short list of accounts — our own test and preview accounts, and occasionally a friend testing the product, always with a reason recorded — kept out of these counts so they reflect real customers. That list is itself built from account email addresses, the same ones described under Your account above, and only the same small group of staff can see it.

Payment. If you subscribe, your card details go directly to Stripe and never reach our servers. We receive back only what we need to know whether your subscription is active.

Buying a self-hosted license. Self-hosted is not currently offered and none have been issued, so nothing here applies to anyone today. If we offer it again, Farmstead Helper will be sold as a one-time license to run on your own hardware. If you buy one, we keep the email address you paid with, the license we issued, and Stripe’s own payment reference, so that if you ever lose the license key we can confirm you are the person who bought it and reissue it. This applies even if you never create an account on the hosted service: buying a license is itself something you do with farmsteadhelper.com, not with the software you install, so it is covered here the same as everything else on this page. That same record is also what a renewal checks: the key you paste in to renew is the one kept here, and the renewed key is sent back to this same email address, never to one typed into the renewal page.

Two more things are kept with that record, and only because the sale itself needs them. The name you asked the license to be issued to, because it is printed on the license and there is no other copy of it. And the moment you agreed, at the checkout, to your key being sent straight away, because that agreement is what lets us send it straight away rather than holding it for two weeks, and a record of it is what lets either of us point to what was agreed. Neither is used for anything else, neither goes to anyone, and we do not keep payment details at all.

Telling you about new versions. Software you run on your own hardware cannot ask us whether a new version exists, because we built it not to: nothing you install ever contacts us about anything. So we use the address you bought with to tell you instead. There are three kinds of message and a few a year at most: a new version has been published, your update window is closing, and, once, an offer to renew it. Every one of them carries a link that stops all three, and using it changes nothing about your license or our ability to reissue your key. We also keep a note of which of these we have sent you, so you never get the same one twice.

Getting back to your license. This applies only if you bought a self-hosted license. Self-hosted is not currently offered and none have been issued, so nothing here applies to anyone today. If we offer it again, the address it was bought with will be how you get back into it.

Your location, if you choose to give it. A homestead can optionally set a coordinate (typed in, or shared from your device with your permission), used for two things. One is to check an overnight forecast against a threshold and warn you of frost. The other is to estimate the season’s frost dates and hardiness zone: we look the coordinate up in climate tables kept on our own server (NOAA’s weather station records and the data behind the USDA hardiness zone map), and it is not sent anywhere to do that. An estimate is only a starting point. Any date or zone you type yourself replaces it and is never changed by a later estimate, and removing the location removes the estimates. You can also give the homestead’s elevation, which is used only to compare with the nearest weather station’s. To get the forecast, we round the coordinate to two decimal places, about a kilometer, and send only that rounded coordinate to a public weather service (see the table below). If it is in or near the United States, it goes to the US National Weather Service first; if the National Weather Service cannot forecast that spot or is unavailable, and for anywhere else, it goes to MET Norway, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. The coordinate you saved is never sent unrounded, and is sent nowhere else. Leave it blank and nothing about the rest of the service changes.

Finding that location from an address or a postcode. Instead of typing the coordinate, you can type a postcode or a street address and we look the coordinate up. A postcode is looked up in a table kept on our own server and is sent nowhere. A street address is sent once, from our server, to one lookup service: the US Census Bureau for an address in the United States, and the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s Nominatim service for anywhere else (see the table below). Only the address and the country you chose are sent, with nothing that identifies you or your account. We do not keep the address: it is never written to our database or our logs, and the answer is held in our server’s memory for at most an hour, so that repeating the same search does not send it again. What the lookup service does with a request is governed by its own privacy policy; the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s says it may study search requests to improve its map. However the location is found, we save only the coordinate, rounded to two decimal places, with a note of how it was found and how precise that is, so the page can tell you.

The free frost dates and seed starting tools. You do not need an account to use either. The ZIP code or postcode you type is looked up in the same table on our own server and is sent nowhere. Our application does not save it or write it to a log. The crops you tick on the seed starting tool are not saved either. Both travel in the address of the page, like any web address, so the ordinary server logs described above may hold them as part of that address. The free egg cost and meat bird cost calculators take no location, only the numbers you type about your flock or a batch of birds (flock size, prices, weights). They work the same way: our application does not save them or write them to a log, and they travel in the address of the page, so the ordinary server logs may hold them.

What we do not collect. No advertising trackers, and no third-party analytics of any kind: the site’s content security policy blocks third-party scripts outright. Nothing follows you to other sites. We do keep a daily count of how many accounts are created from each link we publish, which is described under counting signups below and is not attached to you. No social media logins, no contact lists, no address books. No special-category data beyond the location above: nothing about health, race, religion, politics, biometrics, or sexual orientation.

Why we hold it, and on what basis

• To provide the service you asked for: storing your records, working out the figures, letting the people you invited see them, sending password resets and invitations. In UK and EU terms, this is necessary to perform our contract with you.
• To keep it working and secure: logs, error reports, rate limiting, detecting abuse. Our legitimate interest in running a service that stays up and is not broken into.
• To take payment: where you have subscribed. Necessary for the contract, and in places required by tax and accounting law.
• To understand the business, in aggregate: counting homesteads by plan and people in total, internally, the way described above under Looking at every homestead together. Our legitimate interest in knowing whether the product and its pricing work, weighed against the fact that this reads account and billing information already held for another purpose — which is why the view stays counts and groupings only, and never a single homestead’s own records.
• To send reminders, if you turn them on: the digest of what is due is off by default and sends only if you ask for it. The frost alert is a separate setting, also off by default: an email on any night the forecast low reaches the frost threshold of a homestead you belong to, if that homestead has set a location. Each is consent, and you can withdraw either one in your account settings at any time; turning one off does not change the other.
• To tell self-hosted license holders about new versions: our legitimate interest in supporting software somebody bought from us, and in offering once to renew an update window that has ended. A link in any of those emails stops all of them, and nothing else changes if you use it.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for targeted advertising or cross-context behavioral advertising. We never have.

Who else sees it

People you invite into a homestead see that homestead’s records: that is the point of inviting them. Beyond that, only the following companies process data on our behalf, under contract, and only to do the job named:

You can also connect an AI assistant to your own records, which sends whatever you approve to whoever operates that assistant. It is off unless the homestead owner turns it on and you then approve it, the approval screen names what the assistant would be able to see, and you can disconnect it at any time from your account.

If the owner gives you read and write access, an assistant you connect can also add to and change your homestead’s records: log a feeding, record a loss, start a flock, strike an entry that was wrong. It cannot change who has access to the homestead, invite anyone, touch your email address or password, or do anything with billing. Everything it records is an ordinary entry with a date on it, visible in the same lists as anything you typed yourself and struck the same way. Read-only access stays read-only: an assistant granted it is never offered the tools that would change anything.

We would also disclose information if the law required it (a court order or a valid legal demand), and, if the service were ever sold or merged, to the buyer, who would be bound by this policy or give you notice before changing it. We will tell you about a legal demand unless we are forbidden from doing so.

Where it is held

On servers in the United States. If you are in the UK, the EEA, or Switzerland, using the service means your information is transferred there. We rely on the UK and EU Standard Contractual Clauses with our providers for those transfers. You can ask us for details.

How long we keep it

Your records stay for as long as you keep your account: there is no time limit on how far back you can look, on any plan. Delete your account and the records go with it, along with any homestead you solely own. Backups are overwritten on a rolling basis and deleted content disappears from them within 30 days. We keep the minimum needed for tax and accounting where the law requires it, which for payment records is generally seven years.

How it is protected

Traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords are hashed, never stored. Each homestead’s data is isolated at the database level rather than only in application code, so a bug in a query cannot return another homestead’s rows. The application connects to the database with an account that has no power to bypass that isolation, and an automated test fails the build if that ever changes.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach affects your personal information, we will tell you and the relevant regulator as the law requires.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can:

• Get a copy: export everything you have recorded as a spreadsheet, free, on any plan, from your account. No request needed.
• Correct it: edit your account details and your records directly in the app.
• Delete it: delete your account from your account settings. It is immediate and it is not reversible.
• Turn off reminders: in your account settings.

Depending on where you live you may also have the right to object to or restrict processing, to ask for a machine-readable copy, to withdraw consent, and not to be subject to decisions made solely by automation. We make no automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects.

Everything above can be done yourself, in the app, which is faster than asking us. If you would rather ask, or you want something the app does not cover, write to support@farmsteadhelper.com and we will respond within a month. We will never charge you for exercising a right or treat you worse for it.

If you are in the UK or EEA and think we have handled your information badly, please tell us first, but you can complain to your data protection authority, or in the UK to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

If you live in a US state with a privacy law

States including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas, Virginia and others give residents rights to know, access, correct, delete, and obtain a copy of their personal information, and to appeal a refusal. The rights listed above are available to you and are exercised the same way. If we ever refuse a request, we will explain why, and you may appeal by replying to that refusal; if the appeal is refused you may complain to your state attorney general.

These are the categories we collect, using the labels those statutes use:

We have not sold or shared personal information in the past twelve months, and we do not intend to. Precise location is the only sensitive personal information we hold, it is optional, and we use it for nothing beyond the overnight forecast and the frost-date and zone estimate described above. We do not use or disclose it for any other purpose, which is what several state laws mean by limiting its use. Remove a homestead’s coordinates on the homestead page at any time and that is the limit exercised.

Children

The service is for adults; you must be 18 or over to hold an account. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has created an account, tell us and we will delete it.

Cookies and tracking

One cookie, which keeps you signed in. No advertising, no third-party trackers, nothing that follows you to other sites. Counting signups by the link that brought you here (see above) uses no cookie and nothing stored in your browser: the tag rides along in the page address itself, from the link you followed to the sign-up form. Nothing about it is stored against your account, and the only record kept is the daily total described above, which names a place and a number and never a person. Because we do not track you across sites, there is nothing for a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal to switch off, but we honor them as opt-outs anyway, which changes nothing about how we already behave.

Changes to this policy

If we start collecting something new, we will update this page and say so before it takes effect, in the app or by email for anything material. Every version carries the date it came into force.

Contact

William Batton, trading as Farmstead Helper: support@farmsteadhelper.com. See also the terms of service.