If you want to eat all local food, you need to preserve and store food at harvest time to last until the next harvest. Food storage was a fact of life for our forebears, but it's something that we're not always used to thinking about!
Food preservation, however, does not need to be complicated. Most fresh foods can be frozen, dehydrated, or canned. A fantastic website to help you get started (or to answer questions, even if you are an experienced food preserver) is PickYourOwn.org.
*If you want to find U-Pick farms, click on "Start Here" at the top of the page, and find your state.
*Check out "Picking Tips" for how to tell what is ripe.
*Click on "Home canning, freezing, etc." for a wealth of information. There are step-by-step directions and photos on how to preserve almost any fruit or vegetable. (I learned how to can fresh figs, which I tasted for the first time this summer!)
*Also under "Home canning, freezing, etc." there are links to online sources for food storage supplies. I discovered that Amazon has a great price on pectin. Who knew?
Even if you don't want to get into food preservation "Big Time," you can freeze some produce--or even make freezer jam--with no special equipment. Check out this wonderful website, and give it a try!
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