With regards to the connection to server timed out problem, it looks like I owe the developers an apology. Although I did not have this problem before Dec. 23, it appears that having uninstalled/reinstalled Adobe Flash has solved this problem for me. I have worked at several farms to confirm that it is working better, and it is. Interestingly though, I had not recently updated Flash prior to the problems that occurred after Dec. 23, so this is why I obviously suspected the Farm Town updates.
Harvesting seems to be working quite well now, but plowing lags behind quite a bit. In two cases where I have been plowing solo on full-size farms (immediately following the harvest of the same farms) I have found that plowing seems to be quite slow and I am able to finish clicking fields while the counters are still 9-10 rows behind. I have to sit and wait for 5-10 minutes and wait for it to finish. Certainly not the end of the world, but it would be nice if it were faster
Oh the other hand, plowing seems much faster if you are hired to plow only and go in with a fresh cache/buffer. It just seems like when you are hired for any job, the cache/buffer is filled up with every click, but those resources are never returned until the entire Flash applet is reloaded.