Terms of Use
Last updated 2026-06-22.
Reference, not advice
This site is a seasonal nature reference offered in good faith. Timing varies year to year with weather and local conditions, and nothing here is a safety, edibility, or medical claim. Verify current conditions before planning activities, and never eat or use a wild plant or mushroom based on this site.
Purchases
Checkout is handled by Stripe, which acts as the merchant of record for guide purchases: Stripe is the seller on the transaction, handles the payment, and takes care of any sales tax. Stripe may therefore be the name that appears on your card statement. We never see or store your card number: we receive only the fact of a completed payment, your email address, and which product it was.
Tax. Prices on this site are shown before tax. Where the law requires it, sales tax for your location is calculated and added at checkout, so the total you pay may be a little more than the listed price. You will see the exact amount before you pay.
The Birch Year Club
The Birch Year Club is a yearly membership, sold through Stripe as merchant of record, like the guides. The Birch Year Club is $49 a year. It renews automatically each year at $49 until you turn renewal off, which takes one click on your account page. Turn it off before the renewal date and you will not be charged again. Full refund within 30 days of joining or renewing.
While a membership is active, a member may download every guide in the library. A guide you downloaded is yours to keep and print under the same rule as a guide you bought (below). If a membership ends, new downloads stop.
Founding price. The first 250 memberships bought by Sunday, October 11 at 11:59 pm Eastern (2026) are founding memberships. The Birch Year Club is $29 a year at the founding price. It renews automatically each year at $29, the founding price, for as long as the membership continues, until you turn renewal off, which takes one click on your account page. Turn it off before the renewal date and you will not be charged again. Full refund within 30 days of joining or renewing. After that date, or once 250 have been bought, whichever comes first, a new membership is at the price shown on the join page.
Member prices. While a membership is active, a signed-in member pays 12% less than the price shown to everyone else, on everything in the shop, applied at checkout. The price everyone else pays is the shop’s real price, not a former or inflated one.
Promotional credit. A membership adds $20 of promotional credit to the member’s account when it starts and at each renewal; it can be spent once that year’s 30-day refund window has passed, so a refunded membership never carries spent credit with it. Orders a member pays for earn more, in the amount shown with each product, ready 30 days after the order. Promotional credit is not cash, a gift card or a payment method: it has no cash value, cannot be bought, sold, transferred or refunded, and is never paid out. It applies at checkout in the Birch Compass shop only, to at most 50% of an order and only when at least $5 is used, and never to shipping or tax. Member prices do not combine with other discount codes; the larger one applies. Credit given at the start of a membership year expires 120 days after it is added; credit earned on an order expires 365 days after that order; reminders are sent before either expires. Credit earned on an order that is refunded or returned is removed, and credit spent on a refunded order is returned. A disputed or reversed membership charge is treated as a refund: its credit is removed and the membership ends. If a membership ends, unused credit ends with it.
Guides are digital downloads. After payment you get a download link immediately, and that link stays open for 72 hours so you can move the file to the device you actually want it on. Lost it? Ask for it again with the email you paid with.
Printed goods
Prints, calendars and the other printed goods in the shop are sold by Steady Compass Goods, the company behind Birch Compass, through a checkout run by Shopify. That is the name you will see at checkout and on your order. Each piece is printed to order by a print partner. Prices are shown before tax; any sales tax for your address is added at checkout and shown before you pay.
What shipping costs, where we ship, and what happens if a piece arrives damaged or not at all are set out in Shipping and returns. Printed goods are made to order and follow that page; the thirty-day refund below is for downloadable guides.
Refunds on guides
Thirty days, full refund, no reason needed. Email us from the address you bought with and say the word; we refund through Stripe and you keep the file: asking for a digital download back is theatre. If a guide is simply not what you expected, that is a good enough reason, and we would rather know.
What you may do with a guide
Print it as often as you like, for yourself, your family, or a class you teach. Do not resell it, and do not post the file for public download. The underlying data is public; our compilation, writing, and layout are not.