The Homestead Paradise Guide

Homestead Paradise keeps your livestock, garden, preservation, and infrastructure in one place — each with its own books that roll up to a single homestead total. Then Harold reads those records and tells you what to do next.

Set up in three steps:

1. Create your account. Start a free account or a 14-day trial at sign up — no card needed to begin.
2. Name your homestead. On first login you'll set your homestead name, hardiness zone, and frost dates. Harold and the garden planting calendar use these, so it's worth getting right.
3. Add your first records. Head to any domain in the left sidebar and add an animal group, a garden bed, a pantry item, or a piece of equipment. The Overview page then shows your stats and finances.

Plans at a glance:

• Free — full logging across all four domains, one animal group + one garden bed, the cross-domain finance rollup, and a taste of Harold each month.
• Pro ($7/mo or $49/yr) — daily Harold advice (fair use), up to 5 animal groups, and multi-bed garden, preservation, and equipment.
• Max ($12/mo or $99/yr) — everything unlimited, plus breeding/incubation/gestation, feed tracking, receipt scanning, and Harold's Eyes photo ID.
• Founding Member ($39/yr) — for early sign-ups: full Max-level access locked in for life.
• Your 14-day trial gives you full Max-level access so you can try everything. Annual billing is cheaper than paying by the month.

Your local forecast rides along on the Overview dashboard.

• Set your location once: the first time you open the dashboard, the weather card asks for your ZIP code. Enter it and your forecast appears.
• Today plus a 7-day outlook: current conditions and today's high/low, with a Show full 7-day forecast button for the week ahead and a refresh arrow to pull the latest.
• Frost watch: when an overnight low near freezing is coming, the card raises a frost alert so you can cover tender plants and check unheated waterers — and Harold flags it too.

Weather comes from the U.S. National Weather Service, so it's US-only for now.

Harold is the whole point. He's not a chatbot pasting generic tips — he reads your records (this week's lay rate, your frost window, your feed spend) and gives specific, husbandry-literate advice, the way a neighbor with thirty years on the land would.

• Chat anytime from Advisor in the sidebar. Ask things like “Why did my hens slow down?” or “What should I plant this week?”
• Proactive watch. The advisor page highlights what Harold is watching — a lay-rate dip, tonight's frost, a jam about to expire, a tractor overdue for service — before you think to ask.
• Weather-aware. Harold reads your live forecast too, so you can ask “Is frost coming?” or “Should I water today?” and he answers from your actual conditions.
• The better your records, the better his advice. Log production, health, and dates regularly and Harold gets sharper.
• Harold's Eyes (Max/trial): in Harold's Eyes, snap a photo and Harold identifies it — a breed, a plant or weed, a bug (friend or foe), what's wrong with a plant, even a snake. Answers come ranked with honest confidence, never a fake percentage. You can save a breed ID straight onto an animal's record, or drop a dated note — with the photo attached — onto a garden bed (find them under each bed in Garden, stored privately). Up to 50 photo IDs a month. Harold never makes eat/don't-eat calls, always treats unidentified snakes as venomous, and never gives chemical mix rates.
• Availability: Harold is included on Pro, Max, and your trial. Free accounts get a limited number of consults each month.

Track any species — poultry, goats, rabbits, bees — from one workspace.

• Animal groups: in Livestock, add a group by species with female/male/juvenile counts, breed, purpose, and an optional photo (snap one with your phone camera).
• Individual animals: want to track animals by name? On any group card tap 🐾 Individual animals to add each one with a tag, breed, birthday, status, notes, and its own photo — and see the health and production history attached to that animal.
• Log production: record eggs, milk, and more. After you log, the card shows a running “last 7 days” total so you can spot trends fast.
• Health & mortality: under Livestock → Health & mortality, log health records, raise alerts (Harold reads open ones), and record losses.
• Breeding & hatching (Max/trial): in Breeding, set breeding pairs and clutches — due and hatch dates are calculated automatically from the species' incubation/gestation period.
• Feed (Max/trial): in Feed, track feed inventory and usage (which auto-decrements stock) with low-stock flags and cost.

• Beds & plantings: in Garden & Crops, add beds, then plantings with the crop, planting method, and status.
• Harvest logging: record harvests against a planting to keep your yields and finances accurate.
• Planting calendar: from Garden → Planting calendar, enter your average frost dates once and the app lays out recommended spring and fall sow-and-harvest windows for every crop — tuned to your place, not a generic almanac. It's a starting guide, so adjust for your own microclimate.

• Storage locations: in Preservation, set up your pantry, freezer, root cellar, etc.
• Preserved items: log canned, frozen, and cured batches with a best-by date. Items are color-flagged as they approach expiry so nothing turns before you use it.
• Mark consumed when a batch is gone to keep your pantry accurate.

• Equipment: in Infrastructure, track gear with a maintenance interval.
• Maintenance logs: record service and the app calculates what's overdue, due soon, or coming up.
• Tasks span the whole place, and Harold factors frost-aware warnings into what needs doing.

Every domain keeps its own income and expenses. The Overview page rolls them into a single homestead net, with a per-domain breakdown chart — so you can see at a glance whether the flock, the garden, or the whole place is in the black.

Sales & invoices: sold some eggs, honey, or produce? From Sales & Invoices you can log the sale as income and print a clean invoice headed with your farm name for your own records. Those entries flow into the rollup and the full Finances ledger.

From Budget you can set monthly spending targets — overall, by area (livestock, garden, and so on), or by category (feed, seed, vet…) — and income goals to aim for. A simple bar tracks each one against your real ledger: green while you're on target, orange the moment you tip over. A “Budget — this month” strip on the Overview keeps it in view.

Cost to produce: tag a feed or vet purchase to a flock and Homestead Paradise divides it by what you gathered — so each livestock group shows its real cost per dozen (or per pound) right on the Livestock page.

Overall and per-area targets and goals are free; per-category and per-source ones, plus cost-to-produce, are part of Pro.

Reports turns your ledger into a profit & loss for any period — income and expenses by category, down to a net figure. Underneath, a Schedule F summary rolls those categories into the IRS Form 1040 farm-tax lines, and a Print / Save as PDF button gives you a clean one-page sheet to hand your accountant.

The profit & loss is free; the Schedule F summary is part of Pro. It's a helpful guide, not tax advice — confirm the totals with a tax professional.

Cash flow looks forward instead of back. Enter your cash on hand today and it projects your balance six months out — using your budget for expected spending and your recent income for what's coming in. If you're headed for a lean month, the balance turns red and flags it early, while there's still time to plan.

Cash-flow projection is part of Pro.

• Recurring entries. From Recurring, set a monthly, weekly, or biweekly income or expense once and it posts itself as each date arrives — catching up automatically whenever you open the app.
• Bank import. On Import CSV, upload a CSV from your bank, confirm which columns are the date, description, and amount, review the auto-sorted rows, and add them in bulk — exact duplicates already in your ledger are skipped.
• Attach receipts. Every row in the Finances ledger has a 📎 button to attach a photo or PDF of the receipt. They're stored privately and opened through a short-lived secure link — never public.
• Scan a receipt. On Finances, tap 📷 Scan a receipt, snap a photo, and it reads the amount, date, and vendor and fills in the expense for you — you just confirm, and the photo stays attached.

Recurring entries and bank import are part of Pro. Attaching a receipt photo works on every plan; the automatic receipt scanner is a Max feature (up to 50 scans a month).

Made a typo or need to remove something? Most records have an inline Edit panel — open it, the fields pre-fill, then Save, Cancel, or Delete right there. Recent-entry lists on the livestock, garden, and infrastructure pages make your latest logs easy to find and fix.

Your data is never locked in. From Export data you can download any dataset — animal groups, production, health, mortality, feed, plantings, harvests, preserved items, equipment, and transactions — as a CSV, one click each.

Homestead Paradise installs to your phone's home screen and runs full-screen — no app store needed.

• Android (Chrome): open your dashboard and tap Install on the “Get the Homestead Paradise app” banner, or use Chrome's menu → Install app.
• iPhone (Safari): tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen.
• Once installed, it opens straight to your dashboard and works great in the barn.

Stuck or have an idea? Open Support in the sidebar and send us a message. You'll see your past messages and our replies right there.

• Never used to train Harold. Your records are yours — we don't use them to train Harold or anyone else.
• Export anytime. Pull everything to CSV whenever you like.
• Cancel anytime. No lock-in — leave whenever you want and take your data with you.
• The details: read our full Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Do I need a credit card to start?

No. Start free or begin a 14-day trial without a card.

What animals can I track?

Any species — poultry, goats, rabbits, bees, and more. Production types include eggs, milk, and others.

Why does the garden calendar matter about frost dates?

Planting timing is driven by your hardiness zone and frost dates, set during homestead setup. Update them in your homestead settings if they change.

How do I get Harold to be more useful?

Log regularly. The more current your production, health, and dates are, the more specific his advice gets.

Is there a mobile app?

Yes — install it to your home screen from your phone's browser (see Install the mobile app).