Privacy
Last updated: August 4, 2026
This site is run by Story Thyme Farms LLC, a Missouri limited liability company. It has two halves: the farm and print shop, and the plant library. Neither has user accounts.
The shop
We collect only what an order needs: your name, shipping address, email, and the items you bought. Card details are handled by our payment processor and never touch our servers. We don’t sell or share customer information with anyone except the carriers and the print partner who need it to deliver your order, and we don’t run tracking or advertising cookies. The only things this site keeps in your browser are your own basket, your theme choice, and the ZIP and zone you typed into the zone tool — all in localStorage, none of it sent to us.
Seasonal notes by email
The plant library’s zone tool and the Journal each offer to email you: seasonal notes for the hardiness zone you looked up, and a message when a new journal entry goes up. This is optional and there is nothing else on the site that asks for your address.
What we collect: the email address you type, and — if you signed up from the zone tool — the USDA half-zone it had just resolved (for example “6b”) and which of the two forms you used. That is the whole record. We do not collect your name, your ZIP code, or the pages you were reading. Your ZIP is resolved to a zone in your own browser and is never sent to us or to anyone else.
Why: so we can tell you when something is worth knowing — a planting window for your zone, or when our own stock is actually ready to ship. Nothing else.
Where it goes: the list is held by a third-party email service — Buttondown or Kit, depending on which one is configured — rather than by us. Both store subscriber data on servers in the United States, so if you are outside the US your address is transferred there. Your address is sent from our own server to theirs; it is never handed to a script running in your browser. We do not sell, rent, or share the list with anyone else, and we do not use it for advertising.
Confirming and leaving: signing up sends you a confirmation email, and you are not on the list until you click it — so nobody can add your address but you. Every note carries a one-click unsubscribe link, which removes you immediately. You can also ask us to delete your record outright at the address below and we will, without asking why.
Signup may not be switched on yet. If it isn’t, the form says so plainly and nothing is stored — it will never accept an address it cannot actually add.
What we don’t collect
No accounts, no passwords, no cookies, no tracking pixels, no advertising, no sale of data — and no email address unless you type one into one of the two forms above. The ZIP code you enter in the zone tool is matched against a hardiness-zone table bundled with the site; it is never sent anywhere. It and your theme preference are stored only in your own browser (localStorage) and never leave your device.
Analytics
We do not run page-view analytics on this site — no third-party analytics service, no tracking script, no consent banner, because there is nothing to consent to. If we ever add one it will be cookieless: storing nothing on your device, setting no identifier, and unable to single you out. This page will say so before it happens.
We do keep two plain counts on our own server, with no third party involved: how many people signed up from each form (with the zone bucket, never the address), and which plant and store an outbound click was for. Those counts record no IP address, no cookie, and no browser fingerprint. They do include the country your request arrived from and the path of the page you clicked from, both of which we see only as totals.
Outbound store links
“Where to buy” links go to independent retailers. Some may be affiliate links: where they are, the retailer pays us a small commission if you buy, at no extra cost to you — it never changes what we recommend. When you click one, we record which plant and which store the click was for, plus the country and the page it came from — nothing that identifies you. Once you land on a retailer’s site, their privacy policy applies.
Contact
Questions? Reach the owner at Story Thyme Farms LLC — storythymefarms@gmail.com. Shipping, returns, and payment are covered on the policies page.