Thank you everyone for such great information. At my location, the weather has been completely unpredicatable but tends to be a bit milder than most of northern New Jersey and Pennsylvania -- think, upper East Anglia but with summer humidity and more snow but no terribly low temperatures. We are in a small microclimate here because of the Deleware river. A very light frost was seen about a week ago. We probably won't see snow until the first week of January. My soil is mostly clay but the location for the sloes is very well drained and my property is elevated from the surrounding area. There used to be a couple of cherry trees nearby. I have been in touch with the company in Oregon and last year they didn't have sloes -- they admit that Prunus Spinosa is hit or miss. I will get in touch with the NJ Dept of Enviromental Protection to be sure that I don't break any laws.