Hey, thanks for getting in touch! I've had a go at trying to reproduce some of the main issue described here (with the kitchen and feasting hall water barrels) though mine seem to work okay over about a year, please could I get you to email your save file to ross@kingunderthemounta.in and I'll have a look at what's going on to see if I can fix it.
The job priority is a bit of an issue right now but the two remaining features to implement for the current alpha are manual crafting selection and job prioritisation, so I think I'll leave this one until the job prioritisation is in place, which might fix it straight away, or at least hopefully put some controls in place so the player can manually prioritise planting over other things.