LocallyGrown.net Weblog

Locallygrown.net News

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 09:34:36 -0400

Hi, all! This is Eric Wagoner, over at locallygrown.net. I haven’t talked with you all in a while, so I wanted to let you know what has been going on behind the scenes here.

I usually am constantly rolling out little improvements to the system (and sometimes large ones), but the last few weeks I haven’t done much that you can see. That’s because I’ve been working on some major upgrades to the back end of things that will power the system for the next few years or longer.

The biggest change is an upgrade to the language itself that the software is written in. It’s written using Ruby on Rails, and about every three years a major new version of the language is released. For stability’s sake, I tend to stay one version behind, but there are some great features in the current version of the language I would like to use to make the software better. Better PDF report generation, emailing, language translations, background processing, data validations, general performance speed and stability, and other benefits are waiting for us at the other end of the upgrade. There were quite a few changes to the language, so I’ve been going back and re-writing some of my older code to work with the new version.

In addition to that, I’ll be moving the system to a new set of servers. About every three years, I have moved the system to a new class of hardware. More and more markets are coming online every month (there are hundreds now across North America), and I want to make sure that the system has enough resources to run them all, from the very large markets like mine in Athens, GA and the Homegrown Cooperative in Orlando, FL to the very small markets like Redbird Ranch Fare in Warner, OK. I am able to leverage our combined resources to get us world-class servers at the same facility used by giants like Linkedin and many popular Facebook apps. We’ve grown enough that this server move should be our last, as we’ll be on the top of the line systems that are “elastic”, meaning I can just add processors, memory, and other resources as needed without having to move to a whole new machine.

Those last two paragraphs were pretty nerdy, but in short, when I complete those two tasks the system will be faster and more flexible than ever before. I’ve got a whole list of features I’m ready to work on that will be much easier once I get these two things done. They’re both big jobs, though, and it’ll take me at least another month to get them done.

When I’m ready to turn on the new and turn off the old, there will be a bit of downtime while I synchronize the databases. The last time I did this, the move took about ten minutes, but I’ll schedule a couple hours just in case. I’ll give you all plenty of notice, and will do the work late at night on a Thursday or Friday (the two least busy days for the system). Depending on how things go this month, I’ll looking at making the move in early October. Apart from the brief downtime, you shouldn’t notice anything different at first, nor will you be required to do anything.

I hope this summer has been good to you. I know it’s been a challenging summer for farmers everywhere, but small diverse farms marketing to their own communities, like those who use locallygrown.net, tend to be more resilient than large industrial commodity farms. I’ll continue to work on making this system the best it can be so that you have one less thing to worry about while you’re feeding your neighbors.

-eric

Conferences & Website Changes

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:44:47 -0500

Over the past month or so, I’ve added more than usual new features to the locallygrown website, and wanted to let you know about them. I’ll do that at the end of this email, because first I wanted to talk about conferences.

Several weeks ago, I floated the idea with you of holding a mini-conference in Athens, Georgia for market managers of locallygrown.net markets, immediately prior to the Georgia Organics annual conference also being held here. You all gave a generally positive response, so let’s go ahead and do that. Here’s the details:

It’ll be held on Thursday, February 18th, in downtown Athens. It will consist of presentations from me (and anyone else who wants to show off what they’ve done) and round table discussions about the system, best practices, and so forth, from roughly 9am to 2pm. We’ll then re-convene a short (walkable) distance away for the weekly Athens Locally Grown pickup, so you can observe how my market works from beginning to end. The day will be free for all locallygrown.net market managers, but you’ll need to get your own lodging. Please let me know if you plan on attending so I can be sure to have enough space. The Georgia Organics website (link below) has info about hotels with conference rates.

The Georgia Organics conference runs from Friday through Sunday. It is not free, but will be well worth attending. Guests include Carlo Petrini (the founder of Slow Food) and Woody Tasch (the founder of Slow Money). A limited number of farmer scholarships are available (deadline soon!), and you can learn all about the conference at http://georgiaorganics.org/conference.

I am leading a session Saturday afternoon at the GO conference on the Locally Grown system. If you do decide to stay for the conference and would like to join me, talking about your experience setting up and running a virtual market, please let me know! I’d love to have two other market managers with me.

The other yearly conference I always attend is the Southern SAWG conference, running from January 20 through 23 in Chattanooga, TN. I like this conference so much, locallygrown.net is a sponsor. From that, I’ve got two conference passes I’d like to offer to two locallygrown.net market managers. If you would like to attend the conference but cannot for financial reasons, please let me know. I can’t cover your rooms or extras (such as field trips), but I can get you into the conference, including the keynote dinner. You can find out more about this wonderful conference, and Southern SSAWG in general, at www.ssawg.org.

I think that’s all the conference news. Here are the new features:

Sales report now generates much faster. It also now includes the generation date, like the other reports.
When generating the “All Invoices” document, any invoices with no products get pushed to the front of the document with a big note on it, instead of crashing the entire report. If you see this, and that customer only placed that one order, you’ll want to contact them so they don’t show up for nothing.
Fixed a problem calculating grower sales when an order is edited by changing the quantity sold (such as from “2” to “1”).
Added a link that sets all products with zero or negative quantities as unavailable. This is saving me about a half hour a week!
Added a “monogram” to the product labels, consisting of the first two letters of the customer’s last name. This should really help locating the exact bag of, say, carrots, especially in low light situations. Like during winter.
Added a Textile pop-up reference to all of the text boxes on the site that accept formatting. Hopefully having this at your fingertips will help you make your text look pretty.
Added CSV export of order totals, so you can bring them into Excel, Quickbooks, or other programs. This is totals only, not line items. You can export open orders, your orders for the entire year, or last year, or for all time.

There are some back-end infrastructure items I’m working on as well. My servers aren’t at their limits yet, but the system has grown quite a bit this year so I’m in the process of upgrading those resources.

I’ve also got a good number of things on my to-do list as well. I’ll continue to work on adding useful features, simplifing things I don’t quite have exactly right, and generally making things easier and better for you, your growers, and your customers. If you have any wishlists of your own, please send them to me. Thank you!

A Locally Grown Conference?

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:03:41 -0400

I’ve been wanting to hold a mini conference regarding online farmers markets (and of course locallygrown specifically) here in Athens for a while. It turns out that the 2010 Georgia Organics annual conference (always one of the best in the country — last year’s featured Michael Pollan and Will Allen) will be held in here in Athens on February 19th & 20th, a Friday & Saturday. My Athens Locally Grown market is held on Thursday, so I’ve got a great opportunity to piggyback my notion onto the GO conference.

Would any of you be interested in coming to Athens for a get together on Wednesday the 17th and Thursday the 18th of February, culminating in attending my market pickup that Thursday evening? I think it’d be great to bounce ideas off each other face to face, to share in our experiences and so forth. I’m sure I can put something together at no cost to you, other than your food & lodging, and you’d be able to stay in town if you wanted for the GO conference as well (which isn’t free, but is totally worth it).

Let me know if you’re interested, and I’ll start putting things together. You can learn more about Georgia Organics at http://www.georgiaorganics.org.

Locally Grown in Tampa Bay

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:26:05 -0500

Sisters Susan Bishop and Kathy Oliver of My Mother’s Garden near Tampa Bay, Florida, attended a talk I gave at the SSAWG conference in Louisville, Ky. Less than a year later after establishing their own Locally Grown market, their farm sales have increased by 20%. Congratulations!

It's Conference Season!

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:15:08 -0500

Late fall and winter is the time growers get together to share their successes and warn against their failures from the previous growing season. I always go to the conferences near me, and as locallygrown.net spreads around the nation, I’ve been invited to those a bit more distant, too.

This month, I’ve been to the Financial Permaculture Summit in Hohenwald, Tennessee, the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association conference in Anderson, South Carolina, and the Alabama Organic Production Conference in Andalusia, Alabama.

In January, I’ll be attending the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group conference in Chattanooga, TN. This is probably my favorite conference, and is well worth the journey from wherever you may be.

If you’re anywhere I happen to be, don’t hesitate to say hi and ask any questions you may have. If I was speaking and you’d like to see my slides, you can find them online here.

I look forward to seeing you!

Very Successful Summer

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:24:44 -0400

I didn’t keep up with all the goings on on this page, but it’s been a busy and successful summer for locally grown markets all over the country.

What began as a small alternative market six years ago in Athens, Georgia has spread to other communities in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Missouri, Texas, New Hampshire, Vermont, Oregon, Washington, and California.

My own market exploded this year. The video on this site was filmed two years ago, and I was hopeful that the nearly 50 orders that week as a sign of things to come. Well, we’re now up to almost 800 customers, 40 growers, and enough orders each week to keep five people busy for four hours a week. Instead of merely being an alternative market, it’s now the main farmers market in the area.

The other markets are seeing similar growth. Partly it’s because of the ease of use of this locallygrown.net system, but mainly it’s because people are waking up to the true costs of food harvested on industrial farms and shipped halfway around the world. Attendance and sales at markets around the country are growing like never before, and this online market system just happens to be in the right place at the right time.

I’ve been busy all year adding incremental improvements to the system. Every time customers, growers, and market managers have found things that could be optimized, customized, and simplified, I have done what I can to make it so. In the eight months since I opened the doors, 28,000 items have been purchased earning growers $153,000. It’s not a lot (yet) compared to the industrial farms, but it has helped established small family farms keep going and encouraged many more to begin growing food for their community.

And that is why I put all the effort into this system.

Buy Local on the Mountain!

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 20:14:57 -0400

LocallyGrown.net welcomes the Cumberland Farmers Market sewanee.locallygrown.net/market to the Locally Grown network! The Cumberland Farmers Market has weekly pickups in Sewanee, Tennessee. The folks running this market used to live in the Athens area and have seen first hand how wonderful it is to have a market like this in the community, and we’re happy to have their new market on board.

Connecting North Texas customers with local farmers and craftspeople

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 22:49:46 -0500

LocallyGrown.net welcomes Cross Timbers Food Cooperative to the Locally Grown network! Cross Timbers Food Cooperative has monthly pickups in Denton, Texas, and serves the entire north Texas area.

MOORE FARMS and Friendsâ€¦Real Food From Real Farmers

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:08:59 -0500

LocallyGrown.net welcomes Moore Farms and Friends to the Locally Grown network! Moore Farms and Friends has weekly pickups throughout the Atlanta area.

Up and Running!

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 17:41:13 -0500

The Athens switchover happened as scheduled. LocallyGrown.net is now open for business!