Here’s a letter I sent out to my mailing list last night: -– Hello again! It’s Eric, the fellow working on the on-line farmers’ market software you were at one time interested in. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written you, so I though it was time for an update. The system has come a long way since the last time. It’s not fully functional, but you can right now do a lot of the “grunt” work of getting your market online. I’m still on track to move my own market completely to the new system in early to mid January. Here’s what you can already do using my system:: * You can create your market at a unique locally grown address (i.e. http://myfarmersmarket.locallygrown.net ) * Your market comes with a welcome page, an Frequently Asked Questions system, and a weblog (news page), all out of the box and all fully configurable and ready for your own content. * Users can create accounts at your market. There are three levels: Market Manager (you, and anyone else you want to promote), Growers (all sellers through the market are called growers), and Customers. * Any number of growers can join the market. Unsolicited requests require approval from a market manager before they are listed and can begin selling. * Growers get their own “About” page and a photo gallery, with unlimited photos and captions. * Market Managers and Growers can organize product categories and list products, giving them full descriptions, images, prices, etc. You can build your product category structure from scratch, or just automatically use the categories I’ve been using at my market for the last five years and go from there. * Market manager and growers can quickly adjust availability, pricing, and other items at any time. Growers can only edit their own products, but Market Managers can edit everything. * Membership is flexible. You can charge customers an annual membership (you set the amount). You can charge growers a fee to join the market and charge a fee to sell their products (either as a variable percentage of sales, set per grower, or as a flat fee per item). * Pricing is flexible. Growers set their own prices. The market can tack on a surcharge for each item. The customer sees the total of the two. The Grower gets the sales price, minus any surcharge, minus any sales percentage. It’s hard to succinctly describe, but should be easy in practice. All of that is working as of right now. Here’s what I’m still working on: * Automatic sending of the availability email. Each week I send out an email to our customers with a little chatty news section followed by the complete listing of products for that week. They go to the website to place their orders, but they enjoy getting the email as a reminder. So, the new system will allow you to type the chatty news section through the weblog, and by checking a box it will email all your customers the weblog entry plus the product listing. * Ordering system. This should come online very soon, probably within a couple days. Customers can place their own orders, and market managers can place orders for customers unable to do so themselves. Confirmation emails go out to both the customer and the market manager. * Order processing. The market manager should be able to edit and adjust individual orders and individual items within the order. This includes price adjustments, credits, etc. * Grower harvest notification. The growers can see the orders for their products in real time through the website, but at the end of the ordering window, the website will automatically send emails out to the growers letting them know of the orders, what needs to be harvested, etc. * Label generation. Labels for each grower will be automatically generated as PDF documents formatted for printing to several standard Avery label sizes. The growers can print them on their own using their own printer (or the market manager can do it for them). * “Delivery Day” reports. PDFs will be created for processing grower drop-offs/pickups, invoices for the customer, and packing lists for those putting orders together. * After-pickup adjustments. Customer orders can be adjusted after the fact to account for rejections, shortages, credits, etc. * Minor stylesheet issues. Internet Explorer, always difficult for web designers to work with, is not displaying some pages as nicely as it should. This is particularly true of the photo galleries. I’ll fix that. And that about sums it up. You can see what we’ve done with our market at http://athens.locallygrown.net – feel free to look around, “tour” our member farms (They’re used to me doing everything for them, but I’m walking them through uploading photos, etc.), and browse our product listings. Some other markets have already begun putting their markets together using what I have in place so far. Cumberland Co-op in Tennessee is the farthest along – you can find their site at http://sewanee.locallygrown.net Feel free to create a site for your market to get the ball rolling and see for yourself how it works. Just go to http://www.locallygrown.net and click on “Our Markets” to get started. And as always, if you have any questions, feature requests, etc., please let me know. Over the last five years I’ve seen how our system has revolutionized marketing for small growers and farmers markets in general in our area, and I know it can do the same for yours.

What are the characteristics of a LocallyGrown.net farmers’ market? The produce is local to the market. Every market may have a different idea of what that means. For our market in Athens, GA, nothing comes from further away than about 100 miles. The system won’t prevent you from selling something that traveled 1000 miles, but that goes against what I’m trying to accomplish here. The growers set their own prices. The system is meant to emulate many aspects of a traditional “booths and tables” farmers’ market. The customers are buying directly from the grower, at prices set by the grower. The grower describes what it available, supplies photos of the items, and sets the purchase price. The customer has choices. Just like at a traditional farmers’ market, the customer can browse everything that is available from all of the different growers. The customer can choose exactly what to buy, how much to buy, and from what grower to buy. The customer has time to decide. Unlike a traditional market that may be only open for a couple hours (with all the good stuff gone soon after opening), LocallyGrown.net markets are usually open for business for two days—long enough to fully browse the site and plan menus for the week. Availability is flexible. The growers estimate how much of each item that will be able to harvest a week ahead of time. This takes both skill and practice. Even so, unpredictable factors—such as whether or not it is sunny on a Wednesday morning—can make the difference between having a bumper crop or a very small harvest. So, the site will allow customers to keep on ordering an item even if sales have passed the estimated availability. The item might not be there when the order is put together, but then again, it just might be. The produce is harvested to order. After the ordering window has closed, the growers are notified of all of their orders for the week. They usually have a day or so to go out and harvest exactly what was ordered, package it, and deliver to the pick-up site. The produce is not coming off from a shelf somewhere, but is coming straight from the field to the customer. Of course, this doesn’t apply for some items. Garlic, for example, is often cured for a while before sale. Jams and other preserves may be made in batches. Honey is processed seasonally and then stored. Soap is made in batches. You get the idea, but most things will indeed be harvested to order. Payment is taken when the orders are picked up. Most markets will have a set time and location for customers to pick up their orders. Payment is not made in advance through the website but is instead made in person when the order is picked up. This is because adjusting the amount owed for an order will be a common occurrence. Maybe something ran short due to bad weather, or maybe there were extra items available on the table when the customer arrived, or maybe the grower decided to adjust the price down at the last minute to account for an imperfection. In any case, it is much easier to do this in person rather than going back and trying to issue credits and adjustments through the website. One aspect to this, however, is that if a customer places an order but for whatever reason does not arrive to pick it up, the customer is still responsible for paying for that order. Since everything is harvested to order, the growers still had to work to put the order together, and should therefor still get paid for that effort. That is what makes a LocallyGrown.net market. There are other details on how the site works, but in a nutshell, that is what sets our markets apart from buying clubs, CSAs, and traditional farmers’ markets. Over five years in Athens, GA, the system evolved that included the best points from all of those while minimizing the downsides for the customers, the growers, and the community. FromThe LocallyGrown.net Weblog, now making its first public appearance. Don’t Slashdot it yet though – it’s not quite ready for the masses.

I’m making some serious strides in my efforts to let other groups painlessly replicate the farmers’ coop we have here. I’ve more or less finished the part that lets one create a new online market (including a weblog, FAQ section, and photo gallery), lets growers join the market (and fully describe their farm, including a photo gallery), and lets customers register at the market. To do is the (rather sizable) task of letting the growers list their wares, the customers to place orders, and the backend to process the orders. But, I’m right on schedule. Here’s a video that was shot during a market pickup last season by Georgia Organics that describes what we do and why other communities will want to follow in our footsteps:

This is What Waterboarding Looks Like, courtesy of the Khymer Rouge at the Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. And now brought to you by the good ol’ U.S. of A.

They are cowards. Either the current administration is populated with cowards without even an iota of honor or they are subverting our Constitution and the honor of our country for purely political gains. The lesser of the two evils is that they are cowards in a crisis that is well beyond their capabilities to handle. They want us to believe that THIS crisis is the greatest threat our country has ever faced. Greater than the Revolution when our very existence was in question. Greater than the War of 1812 when our nation’s capital was burned and pillaged. Greater than the Civil War when our nation was torn asunder, brother fighting brother. Greater than World War 2 when we faced a world wide threat of totalitarianism. Greater than the Cold War when we faced global annihilation. If they truly believe this, then they must be cowards. Granted during some of these conflicts we did forget our principals at times and have later regretted the actions. Also granted that in any conflict there will be incidental examples of horror. More importantly some of these crises have given us shining examples of how Americans are supposed to act. How Americans stand on the moral high ground even during our darkest hours. George Washington refused to torture the Hessians. General Washington said we will not do this. He said these people will be treated with respect and dignity and they will suffer no abuse or torture, because to do otherwise would bring dishonor upon our sacred cause. Where is our honor now? During WW2, there were reports that American commanders released German POWs because they could not adequately protect them. Consider how we treated the Japanese POWs honorably even when we knew how they treated their prisoners. Where is our honor now? None of these conflicts caused us to abandon our founding principals as completely as the current Administration is asking us to do. They have replaced “Give me liberty or give me death” with the completely onerous “You have no liberties if you’re dead”. They have forgotten the words of our birth “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These rights are unalienable and they apply to ALL men. They want to engage in activities (torture) that the rest of the civilized world has abandoned. No one other than pundits and politicians has claimed torture works. The people directly affected by and implementing the policy of torture have stated that it DOES NOT WORK. Israel, which has been on the frontline of terrorism for decades, abandon the practice. When these same activities were perpetrated on members of our armed services, we were rightly horrified and demanded that they cease. If they want to do these things in my name, stop. If they want to do these things to make me feel safer, stop. Do not bring dishonor to my name or my country because you are cowards. -- Posted by an 8-year Marine

After nearly ten years of living and working around Athens, I finally saw R.E.M. perform at one of their notorious unannounced performances. It was a combination release party for And I Feel Fine: Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987 CD and When the Light is Mine: Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987 DVD sets from R.E.M. and Finest Worksongs: Athens Bands Play the Music of R.E.M. benefit CD. I had a hunch, and sure enough the original four (plus another fellow I didn’t know) were the second band to play. Mike Mills and Peter Buck returned to the stage throughout the night to play with the other bands. Thirteen dollars was quite a small price to play to see R.E.M. play from ten feet away at the Fabulous 40 Watt. EDIT: I knew he looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him at the time. The fifth band member was none other than Young Fresh Fellows frontman Scott McCaughey. I think that probably maximizes the jealousy felt by my fellow Techies.

So we were out and about yesterday evening, and one place we went into had a large cut-out of a flying Superman suspended from the ceiling. Vivian looked up, pointed, and said, “Daddy!”. What more could I possibly ask for on Father’s Day?

I put my RailsDay entry at weather.ericwagoner.com. It’s exactly as it stood after 24 hours, typos and bugs and all.

I finished with four minutes to spare. Here’s a shot of the front page of the app. It turned out pretty nice for 24 hours… though I’ve seen screenshots of some of the competition and wowsers!

I’ve now got a complete application. I could be adding bells and whistles, but with only two hours to go, it’s time to clean everything up, do some final testing, write some simple instructions to the judges, and let it go.

Four hours to go! Here’s another screenshot. On a whim I tried a “Rock Star (diet) Energy Drink”. It’s like condensed cool-aid with a few Flinstones vitamin pills crushed in. Yum yum!