You absolutely need a deep freezer if you want to buy local meat. Most producers, us included, sell frozen cuts only -- managing inventory of non-frozen meat would be way too hectic.
Deep freezers are only like 200 bucks at Costco. Assuming you have space for one in your home, they're also great for making sauces and whatnot in bulk. Also highly recommend a cryovac kit. Cryovac'ed frozen veggies keep more or less forever, and you can also prepare foods (eg, meatballs) at scale on a Sunday afternoon and then just defrost stuff for the rest of the week.
When my wife and I were first married we lived in an impossibly small efficiency and still made room for a chest freezer because of the tremendous efficiencies in food storage it provided for - it was something like $200 on sale at Costco. We still have it, 15 years later doing good service for us and payed for itself many times over.
You absolutely need a deep freezer if you want to buy local meat. Most producers, us included, sell frozen cuts only -- managing inventory of non-frozen meat would be way too hectic.
Deep freezers are only like 200 bucks at Costco. Assuming you have space for one in your home, they're also great for making sauces and whatnot in bulk. Also highly recommend a cryovac kit. Cryovac'ed frozen veggies keep more or less forever, and you can also prepare foods (eg, meatballs) at scale on a Sunday afternoon and then just defrost stuff for the rest of the week.