The Green Fork is the official blog of the Eat Well Guide. Click here to Find Good Food.

Although the official Eat Well team is a small one, there are dozens of people who help support the program, including consultants, interns and volunteers. One such volunteer is Devra Gartenstein, owner of the Patty Pan Grill in Seattle, and author of The Accidental Vegan and upcoming cookbook Local Bounty. Devra has been volunteering for Eat Well since January, researching regional listings for the Eat Well Guide. She also writes her own blog, the  Quirky Gourmet, but today, she brings us news from the Emerald City.

Here in Seattle, as in so many places, we’re gearing up for farmers’ market season. I run a food concession at eight local markets, where I cook a menu based on locally sourced ingredients. This is my twelfth year as a farmers’ market vendor, and during that time I’ve seen the Seattle markets grow from two markets to eleven (with at least a dozen more in outlying areas).

Until this year, not one of these markets had a permanent home. They’re mostly held in parking lots or on the grounds of community centers, and each market has had to renegotiate for its location year after year. This has become more of an issue as real estate prices have appreciated: it gets harder to find open spaces, and more difficult to create long term arrangements.

Lately, the city has been working closely with market administrators to remedy this situation. The Lake City Market now has a secure location in a grassy park next to the neighborhood library and community center, with a playground and a picnic area. The process of establishing the market there has helped to open a dialog between market managers and city council members which will hopefully lead to more permanent market sites in the future.

Seattle has one of the longest growing seasons in the country, and three of our markets run all winter. Vendors set up in wind and snow, but mostly in the interminable rain. Farmers tweak their product mixes through the seasons, offering more frozen, prepared and dried items during the chilly months and, of course, plenty of greens. Lately we’ve been seeing some of the early spring vegetables, with hearty salad mixes, young onions and garlic, and broccoli and cabbage raab. Last week I caught a glimpse of the first local asparagus.

Each market has its own rhythm. The ones with limited seasons start with a bang, hosting opening day galas with music, puppets and speeches. Year-round markets crescendo gradually through the spring, peaking later in the season. The farmers trickle in a few at a time as their crops become available rather than coming all at once on opening day.

It’s great to see the farmers returning, and to learn how they fared during the winter months. Some have had a really rough season, like Heidi and Mike Peroni, of Boitsfort Valley Farm (near Olympia), who lost their house and all of their equipment in a flood late last fall. They’ve been able to do some cleaning and rebuilding, with friends and neighbors organizing regular work parties to help. After a tough few months, they recently got some good news: tests have revealed that their land was not contaminated with toxins that would compromise their organic status, so they’ll be able to continue to label their produce as organically certified.

I’m excited for the market season and thrilled to be a part of the community of farmers’ market vendors. I see many of the same farmers at different events over the course of each week, and follow their travails and triumphs. This has been a difficult spring for many farmers in this area because the cold weather hung on much later than usual. Still, they’re managing to get some crops to market, and there’s so much more to come. We’re all very excited now, and we’re all going to be very tired in a few months.