@MontereyJack,
I was involved in a discussion elesewhere about theUSDA climate /crop zones. eve comfortably slipped into a climate zone where specific boreal trees are moving further north and subtropical trees (like srepe myrtle and live oak) have been slowly moving north from Delmarva into Pa an NJ and western Md.
We used to be a comfortable growing area for RHUBARB, no more, rhunarbs need a "hardening off" riod of about 4 to 6 weeks STRAIGHT of freezing weather that runs th frost line to thir deeper tap roots. This has not been the case for about 20 years.
We ar testing an growing entirely new lgums on our farm. New varieties of hot season alfalfas, and alfalfas that can live in almost tropical wet conditions as well as new varieties of birdsfoot trefoil are all becoming the "new norm". Theyve also hit on some new varieties of high protein orchard grasses
Ask any of the tech reps of the seed companies, our three local reps are 2 to 1 republican , but they dont deny the product results of their own agronomy studies.
No matter what the deniers seem to hang on to, science and industry AND agriculture will find a work around that results in making a profit.
Thats what a normal to high IQ range should be able to provide us all with, the ability for individual analyses of data and arriving at good information based conclusions.
Im planting alfalfa and trefoil comfortably as a zone 7B , when I started farming over 30 years ago, I was in zone 6 (almost the cuttoff zone for most peach varieties)