I saw it had been a few years and a new game version ago since this was last brought up, but I would love to be able to have decorative non-withering versions of crops.

I building a full-blown city, with surrounding farms eventually, in survival, and ultimately keeping up with crops will become impossible. I get how, for game-play purposes, having a wither mechanic makes sense - but it makes it very impractical to build farms beyond what is needed for survival and immediate crafting needs, solely so your decorative farm has a nice field of wheat all the time.

Ideas for what I would like, because I know nothing about modding but know what works for me as a user:
Developer level: Have a crops wither toggle just like for hostile AI, AI spawn rate, ruin decay, etc
More to the point of a Workshop discussion, mods:
--Cheap craft-able treatment to freeze a crop at a specified development stage, using something generally useless, like dirt, as the material. There is a mod that lets you grind skulls from barbarians and antlers from deer to make fertilizer to speed up crop growth, so it seems like this might be doable.
--A decorative version of each crop plant. Obtain seeds the same way, they grow the same way, but never wither and if harvested drop nothing. Not as sure this is practical (again, know nothing about modding or game code.)
--More general game state mod, similar to the snow or the fall colors or increased vegetation mods, that just stops withering.