The Agency of Agriculture is excited about a new mobile freezing unit that will allow Vermont farmers to quick-freeze some of their crops.
The cargo trailer will soon begin traveling around Vermont so processors can freeze berries and produce, at a rate of 600 pounds a minute.
Vermont and other states already have or are planning mobile meat- or poultry-processing units. But the quick freezing trailer is among the first in the nation designed to process and freeze vegetables right at the farm.
Built at a cost of $40,000, with funding from a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant and the Vermont Department of Tourism, its use will be free – for now – as the state Agency of Agriculture tests it out.