*trying to calm down and failing miserably*
Okay, I don't know how it happened, but somehow my village got super low on food in between crop harvests. I had farmers start harvesting, but it's no where near enough food to sustain the wait between the next harvest. I only have about 3000 tech points, so I won't be able to levle up to Farming 3 anytime soon.

Is my village doomed?

You village isn't doomed, but you might have some tense moments, especially if your population is higher than approximately 15 villagers (which is what the farm can comfortably support). You should gather every mushroom you can find to get the food supply up as high as possible, which will help avoid starvation. You should also have every adult villager working at the research table whenever the farm is empty, so that you'll be able to get the next food technology. If your villagers start getting weak from hunger, there's a stew that you can make that will restore their health. If you don't want to experiment with the stews, there are recipe books in the Guide section for the game.

If that ever happens again, you can check the game log to find out why they got low on food. Usually it's due to sick farmers that didn't get healed, but there can be other causes, too. To find out about the log, check the sticky post mear the top of this forum.

Hmm... I didn't know the farm had a population limit, but that would explain it. I have 28 villlagers at the moment. I think I lost track of the food supply because of training some villagers to become elders, so that was my fault. Can villagers live off stew? Because I'm pretty sure the food is going to run out pretty soon, and I don't like the idea of ousting any of them.

They can, but you'll need the right recipe, and enough food to make stew, of course.

Ah, the last part may be tough for a bit. I guess I should have put more people on the research table instead of clearing the bushes. Boy, hindsight, huh?

The gnawing irony is that I have 4 villagers an inch or two away from becoming elders, but none of their final skills are in Research. But its weird. I had one of my soon-to-be-elders start farming at the same time as another villager. That villager is now a Master farmer, but the soon-to-be-elder is still at Adept level almost two game years later. Is this supposed to happen?

The villagers, in addition to the skills and likes/dislikes that you can see, have innate characteristics that can make them respond to learning, work and skills at different rates (just like with real people).

Does the small amount of food that goes into the stew feed more people than the same amount of food in the bin?

If you make the stew that fills health (Orange blossom & 2 purple flowers), you can hop all your villagers health levels to capacity! When your food is about to run out, go ahead & get the herbs in the cauldron & make those punk kids gather 'shrooms! Oh yeah, the red 'shrooms are worth more that the brown ones!!
The only thing that sucks is that the Villagers won't got to the pot on their own, you have to take them all one by one!

There is a health restoring stew that they will go and eat by themselves - at least once you have had one of them try it out. In order to fully restore them, you do of course have to keep encouraging them to eat it. I guess this is what being a "village momma" is all about

Gah! I'm getting this weird [_bug_?] thing where I can't open VV2! I click on it, and it freezes up. This happened before a while back with VV1.
This just is not the day for my village.