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KEVIN GUTTING

Julia Handschuh is a co-director of Commonwealth Center for Change, or C3, which was instrumental in making available this unoccupied space in the basement of Thornes Marketplace for a winter farmers market that starts this Saturday.

NORTHAMPTON - This is the time of year that farmers markets start folding up their tents and the people who like to shop at them start feeling a loss.

But this year in Northampton, a new indoor farmers market is launching. It will be open Saturdays in the basement of Thornes Marketplace. Aptly named the Winter Farmers Market, the site will be open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Organizer Andrew Huckins said he plans to keep the market going for at least the next 10 Saturdays, if not through the whole winter. The end date depends on how long the supplies of participating farmers hold out, he said, and when other area farmers markets open in the spring.

"It looks like there's going to be really a pretty complete array," Huckins said of this weekend's market. Offerings lined up for the inaugural event include everything from grass-fed beef to root vegetables to maple syrup and honey.

And taking a page from the Tuesday Market's book, Huckins plans to add a rotation of musicians and art installations to the mix.

The afternoon Tuesday Market, held in the courtyard between Thornes and the municipal parking garage, ended its second season in October. Two other long-standing markets, the Wednesday afternoon Florence Farmers Market and the Saturday morning Northampton Farmers Market on Gothic Street, are now also closed for the winter.

Huckins, 24, a Williamsburg resident and second-year student at Hampshire College in Amherst, said he gets "really excited about community building."

"I see the market as a good tool to explore some of that stuff and make it a multimedia event," he said. "To get it all in one place seems completely logical."

He credited Thornes and the Commonwealth Center for Change, also called C3, for helping arrange for the use of a vacant space that once housed the former Dynamite Records space. Since the music shop relocated in 2008, the space has been used as a regional office for Barack Obama's presidential campaign and, more recently, C3-sponsored poetry readings.

Participants confirmed for this Saturday's market include the following

 · Sangha Farm of Ashfield, selling goat cheese and truffles;

 · Michael Docter of the Food Bank Farm in Hadley, selling root vegetables and winter squash;

 · Chicoine Family Farm of Easthampton, selling grass-fed beef;

 · Wild Sky Farm of Easthampton, selling greens;

 · El Jardin Bakery of South Deerfield, selling bread;

 · Zawalick's Sugar House of Florence, selling maple products;

 · and Apex Orchards of Shelburne Falls, selling apples and honey.

Huckins said he expects three Connecticut farms to join the market in the coming weeks. These farms will sell goat and cow cheese and milk; tinctures, poultices and herbs; as well as roots and greens.

James F. Lowe can be reached at jlowe@gazettenet.com.