Project Status

Surely you've noticed that the project seems not to have changed since February. Well, I can assure that it's changed plenty, but just not publicly. The way this all works is that I (and a handful of great volunteers) work on the project's "source code" in our efforts to improve to the program for the next release. (This source code stuff is the logical "brain" of the software -- it's where we write down what the program is supposed to do when you click a button or change some data -- but it's quite ungainly and not something that most folks want to mess with.)

Some of our changes are minor (fixing the apostrophe and double quote bug) and some of them are sort of major (changing the structure of the database). Some of the changes beget other changes which beget other changes which ... you get the idea. Given that we're working on all of this on top of running our own farm, we hope you understand that we might not be devoting our entire attention to the software at this time. Rest assured that this project is still alive and well.

To tide you over, here's a few things that will make the next version better than the last:

1. The stupid apostrophe and double quote problem has been fixed. (Welcome back "Joe's Long Cayenne"!)
2. Plantings can finally be explicitly tagged as direct seeded or transplanted. This should only matter for those few crops than can go either way (spinach, kale, sweet corn, etc.)
3. You will be able to keep track of when you planned to plant something as well as when you actually did plant it. (And transplant it, harvest it, etc.)
4. Improved formatting of the weekly planting lists so they include more pertinent information and should be easier to work with while you're out in the field. (And you can finally set your own farm name.)
5. Rigorous "field testing" is ferreting out bugs and leading to new ideas about how to make the program more useful.
   

Plus many, many other tweaks that should make the program much easier to use.