“I’ve been lobbying for a year round market in west county for twelve years,” Ken Orchard of Orchard Farms told me on Sunday at the Sebastopol farmers market. His very best day at the market, he continued, is always the market’s final day of the year. Just when things are getting good, he says, the market ends.

This morning, I was thrilled to read a thoughtful post by market manager Paula Downing at waccobb.net. Paula was writing in response to a thread about the proposed Barlow project and concluded her note by announcing in the written equivalent of a whisper, that the Sebastopol market will go year-round starting this year.

I felt like turning cartwheels.

I’ve long believed that west county needs a year-round market. We have enough farmers who grow winter crops to make it a good market and enough customers devoted to local produce that I imagine it will be well attended. Brava to Paula and to the market board for making this long-awaited decision.