It’s important for locavores to be aware of the agricultural cycle in their vicinity. First and last frost dates are important to that cycle. For the record, I am recording her my own “last frost” date: on April 5, 2011 we moved the last items out of our chest freezer and into our refrigerator’s attached freezer, and unplugged and defrosted the chest freezer for the season.
There was some chard, corn, broccoli, carrots, tomato puree, and applesauce. They joined mashed butternut, pumpkin puree, raspberry conserve, more applesauce, and vegetable stock already in our attached freezer. (Our freezer is not a place of locavore purity. It also contains commercial packages of veggie burgers, tortellini, etc.) We still have 2 very large butternut squashes and 1 blue hubbard squash. Were it not for the new winter farmer’s market, we would have finished our freezer stash long ago and resorted to buying grocery store produce.
