Our Values
Farmstead Circle's values are trust first, human dignity, land stewardship, integrity over growth, practical excellence, accountability, and community before extraction. We built a Virginia homestead care marketplace so technology serves owners and independent caretakers, not the other way around.
By Thomas DeGan, co-founder
Why does Farmstead Circle exist?
We exist so Virginia homestead owners can find independent caretakers without treating care as staffing.
We believe technology, including AI, should strengthen communities and support real work. It should help people solve problems honestly.
We build with intention. Every feature, policy, and decision follows trust, stewardship, and human dignity.
Trust is earned slowly and lost quickly. We operate with transparency, accountability, and respect.
What are Farmstead Circle's seven core values?
Trust first, human dignity, stewardship, integrity over growth, practical excellence, accountability, and community before extraction. They shape how we build, price, and decide.
Trust First
Trust is the foundation of everything we do: honest communication, transparent policies, clear expectations, responsible data handling, and accountability when mistakes happen. No dark patterns, no hidden fees, no deceptive practices.
Human Dignity
People are never 'resources.' We believe every person deserves dignity, honesty, fairness, and respect. We build technology to assist people, not manipulate them.
Stewardship
Agriculture is more than an industry; it is stewardship. We respect the land, the animals, the farms, and the people who dedicate their lives to caring for them.
Integrity Over Growth
Profit and sustainability matter, but integrity matters more. We will never sacrifice trust, honesty, or the wellbeing of our community for short-term growth or vanity metrics.
Practical Excellence
We care more about building something genuinely useful than something merely impressive. Clarity, usefulness, and operational excellence over trends or buzzwords.
Accountability
Every decision made by our company, whether by a person or an AI-assisted system, should remain explainable, reviewable, and accountable. Technology should enhance responsibility, not remove it.
Community Before Extraction
We succeed when the communities we serve succeed. We aim to strengthen rural communities, support small farms, and create long-term value, not extract short-term gains.
How does community before extraction show up?
We put giving and small-pro access into the product, not only into a press line.
Community Before Extraction means we succeed when rural communities succeed. Our Community Commitment turns that value into action: supporting veteran farmers, sponsoring small service pros, and giving back as we grow.
What does "trust first" mean here?
It means honest communication and clear expectations before growth tactics.
We believe in:
- Honest communication
- Transparent policies
- Clear expectations
- Responsible handling of data
- Accountability when mistakes happen
We do not believe in dark patterns, manipulative systems, hidden fees, or deceptive practices.
We Respect the Land
Agriculture is more than an industry. It is stewardship. We respect the land, the animals, the farms, and the people who dedicate their lives to caring for them. We believe technology should support sustainable, responsible farming communities, not replace or exploit them.
The Farm-Compute Compact
Avorka, Inc., which operates Farmstead Circle, convened the Farm-Compute Compact: a draft public framework for responsible data-center development in agricultural communities. It proposes a path between unrestricted buildout and outright opposition, grounded in farmland avoidance, transparency, enforceable commitments, and long-term agricultural reinvestment.
We Respect People
People are never 'resources.' We believe every person deserves dignity, honesty, fairness, and respect. We build technology to assist people, not manipulate them. We believe human judgment, compassion, and relationships matter.
Mission Before Bottom Line
Profit matters. Sustainability matters. But integrity matters more. We are committed to building a company that grows responsibly and ethically. We will never sacrifice trust, honesty, or the wellbeing of our community for short-term growth or vanity metrics.
Practical Excellence Over Hype
We care more about building something genuinely useful than something merely impressive. Our goal is to create reliable, practical tools that help real people solve real problems. We value clarity, usefulness, and operational excellence over trends or buzzwords.
Accountability Matters
Every decision made by our company, whether by a human or an AI-assisted system, should remain explainable, reviewable, and accountable. We believe technology should enhance responsibility, not remove it.
Community Before Extraction
We succeed when the communities we serve succeed. We aim to strengthen rural communities, support homesteads and hobby farms, encourage trust-based relationships, and create long-term value rather than extracting short-term gains.
How do you use artificial intelligence?
We use AI to assist people. We do not use it to manipulate or replace human judgment.
We believe AI should be used responsibly, transparently, and ethically. As we build AI-assisted operational systems within our company, we are committed to principles that prioritize:
Honesty over manipulation
We tell you what the system does.
Assistance over control
AI assists people; it does not replace them.
Transparency over deception
AI decisions are explainable on request.
Stewardship over exploitation
We use AI to serve the community, not harvest it.
Human oversight
Automation never removes human responsibility.
Our systems are designed to support people, not replace human responsibility or judgment.
What primary sources inform how we talk about farms and independence?
We cite independent public sources when we describe farm scale and labor independence. We do not invent statistics.
- USDA NASS: 2022 Census of Agriculture, Virginia (official farm counts and structure for the state we serve).
- U.S. Department of Labor: Fair Labor Standards Act (primary federal labor rules that shape why we keep caretakers as independent service providers, not employees).
What are you committing to long term?
Technology people can trust, meaningful work, stronger rural communities, and doing it the right way.
We want to create technology that people can trust.
We want to support meaningful work.
We want to strengthen communities.
And we want to do it the right way.
We respect the land.
We respect the people.
We serve the mission before the bottom line.