With days lengthening and trees blooming, spring has arrived, heralding another growing season and the opening of the Farmers Market.

On Saturday, the market will resume at the Village Green with a variety of vendors — farmers and crafters as well as those offering prepared food. Free pea starts will be available; tickets for a raffle basket will be sold, and the group Catbird, with Mary Shackleford and Jim Burke, will play folk music from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. As in years past, the market itself will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Island farmer Michelle Crawford of Pacific Potager has been a presence at the market for 25 years — and will be among the farmers there on opening day, offering plant starts and greens.

“I love the community aspect of it, and by selling starts and food, I really have a sense of that,” she said last week. “People talk about how they are going to use (what they buy) in their gardens and at their table. It feels very joyful.”

While many vendors from previous years will return to the market, new vendors will also join this season.

One of those is Northbourne Farm, run by Peter Smutko and his family, who bought the former Hogsback Farm last fall. They intend to plant a wide variety of produce, from salad greens and radishes to onions and potatoes — and plan to do so with the help of draft horses. Smutko has worked on farms before, he said last week, but has not owned one before, and had been thinking of farming with horses for a long time.

“I had always thought it sounded pretty cool to work with draft horses and have a tractor that eats grass rather than diesel, and poops out fertilizer instead of exhaust,” he said.

After purchasing the farm, a friend who also farms with horses, gave him a tip about the two he now has. They are Suffolk Punch horses, and had been farm horses in Michigan.

“I was not in the market for any breed,” he said. “I was in the market for well-trained horses used to farm work, and these are the guys I found.”

He hired someone to bring them cross-country in a horse trailer, he said, and the trio has been practicing in the field.

“I have been driving them around the property and getting them used to the sights and sounds, and used to working with me,” he said, adding that the practice will help them all know how to communicate when it counts.

Smutko said plans are for the farm stand to open in June and for him to join the vendors at the market then as well.

“I am looking forward to meeting more people on the island and introducing myself,” he added.

New crafters will also join the market this year, including a soap maker and a woman who creates socially responsible cosmetics.

Kelli Durkin of the Vashon Island Soap Company intends to be there with her hand-crafted soaps starting at the beginning of May.

She and her husband moved to the island last October from Colorado, where it was hot and dry. They visited Vashon by accident, she said, and fell in love with the island.

“The community is very in tune with how we think and feel, and we want to be involved,” she added.

They moved to the island just months after their August visit, and Durkin began volunteering at Vashon Island Pet Protectors. She is now on the board and is donating 10 percent of her soap sales to that organization, not only from the market, but also from Amazon sales and Herban Bloom, which offers about half of her line.

Durkin has made soaps for eight years from ingredients such as extra virgin olive oil, shea butter, Washington blackberry honey and the smallest amount of lye possible. Many of her soaps are vegan, but she offers some with goat’s milk.

She offers three lines, she said, including a “Honey Bee” series, with such soaps as Honey Bee Bloomin’, with lilac honeysuckle and jasmine, and Honey Bee Love, with wild rose, geranium and bergamot. Her “Man Soap” line features a range of soaps — and humor. Beer Gut includes Washington IPA and goats’ milk, while Lawnmower bars smell like fresh cut grass and moss. Tool is good for gardeners and mechanics, she noted, while Buck Naked does not include any coloring or scents.

A new line, “The Sparkly Gnome,” is not out yet, but will be ready for the market, and like her other products, will be hand-crafted and include only natural ingredients, many from her own garden.

In a similar vein, Lauren Evashenk, the founder of Naked Truth Beauty, a socially responsible cosmetics and personal care business, will also join the market this year. She will not be there opening day, but plans to be there frequently in April and May and then periodically throughout the summer months.

She launched her business, which features make-up and bath salts, last year at the Strawberry Festival, and had a positive response. Now, she is looking to add sugar scrubs, body oil and aftershave.

“My goal is to create products that are good for our bodies, communities and the environment, from start to finish,” she said.

To fulfill that mission, she makes her products with only recognizable, pronounceable natural ingredients, such as beeswax, shea butter and mica. Her packaging follows suit and is recyclable, biodegradable or compostable.

Evashenk said she had been interested in creating such a business for three or four years and took a certificate course at the University of Washington in sustainability and green chemistry to assist in the process.

She noted she has had “fantastic support” for her efforts on Vashon, where many people sport a natural look.

“I am all about promoting natural beauty. You do you, girlfriend,” she said. “If you want to wear makeup, let me give you a healthy option for doing so.”

Evashenk will sell at the farmers market for the first time on April 29.

The market has included vendors offering prepared food in recent years, and some new options will be available this market season.

Patty Freebourn of Patty’s Tamales will be there often and plans to add a chorizo tamale to her line, as well as rice and beans to go with all her tamales. Freebourn cannot attend the opening market, but plans to begin the second week of April.

The Orca Eats food truck will also provide food. Owner Emily Wigley said she will be there on opening day and expects to attend most Saturdays, offering changing menus of seasonal, made-from-scratch food with ingredients that are as local as possible. Items will include a variety of quick-to-serve entrees, sides and truck-made dessert and beverages.

While looking ahead to the market season, Crawford noted that she had just read the most recent agricultural forecast for this area, which had been titled “The Great Wait,” describing this year’s long wait for spring-like weather. The author of that forecast, Rufus La Lone, predicted the possibility of clear skies for the market’s opening day, which he termed “a small window of joy.”

Crawford, noting the extended chilly temperatures and frequent rains of the year, cracked that window of joy open and assured gardeners that even if they seed late, their plants will catch up.

“It is not going to stay like this,” she said.