If you kept track of the calendar, you knew Thursday, August 13 was the last night of Summer Nights on the Green, the Town of Windsor's marquee outdoor concert series, now in its 24th year and running its usual ten-week stretch from June through mid-August. Ten Thursdays, ten bands, then the stage comes down for the season. That is how it has worked for two decades.
Except walk onto the Green this coming Thursday, August 20, and you will find the same folding chairs on the grass, the same line at the food vendors, and a band setting up on the same stage. The official concert series has already wrapped. Nobody told the Green.
The explanation is not a scheduling error. It is a distinction worth knowing if you live in Windsor and want to understand who actually runs the show on your Town Green, because it is not always the town.
Two Organizations, One Lawn
Summer Nights on the Green is a Town of Windsor production, run by the Parks and Recreation Department on its usual ten-week clock. This year that clock started June 4 and ran through August 13, exactly as it has for 24 seasons.
The Windsor Certified Farmers Market is a separate operation. It sets up its own Thursday evening market alongside the town's concerts each summer, but the market answers to its own calendar, not the town's. This year, in its 25th anniversary season, the market decided two Thursday nights weren't enough of a send-off. It added two bonus dates of its own on August 20 and August 27, branded as "Farm Nights," a name that did not exist in past seasons.
That distinction matters more than it might seem. The Town of Windsor's own spring budget update described a General Fund tightening enough to cut three police positions, hold other vacancies open, and defer more than $5 million in road and park maintenance across the current two-year budget cycle. The town is also weighing a local sales tax measure for the November 2026 ballot, a step worth noting because Windsor is currently the only city in Sonoma County without one, sitting at a 9.25 percent rate that is the lowest in the county.
None of that is a reason to worry about the Green. It is a reason to notice that the extra programming this August did not come from new town spending. It came from a 25-year-old market organization deciding, on its own initiative, to stretch its own season by two weeks. If the Green's calendar keeps growing the way it has this year, that growth is more likely to come from organizations like the farmers market than from the town's own discretionary budget, at least until residents settle the tax question this fall.
A Zucchini Festival Older Than The Market Itself
Wedged between the two Farm Nights is a Sunday that has nothing to do with concerts at all. On August 23, the market's regular Sunday session becomes the 26th Annual Zucchini Festival, complete with zuke car races, a veggie art contest, and a Kidz Dig It cooking class for younger visitors.
Here is the detail that is easy to miss: the market itself is only celebrating its 25th anniversary this season, but the Zucchini Festival is billed as its 26th annual running. A festival that predates the market's own reported anniversary by a year is a small thing, but it is the kind of detail that suggests the zucchini celebration existed as its own community tradition before the market formalized around it, rather than being invented as market programming from day one. Windsor residents who have been coming to the Green long enough may already sense this. New arrivals usually don't, because most calendars just list "Zucchini Festival" without the number attached.
The market marked its own milestone back on July 5 with a birthday cake and a set from the Windsor Jazz Ensemble, a detail worth knowing if you're the kind of household that plans a summer around which Thursday has the better band lineup.
Here is the full run of what's left on the calendar this month and next, gathered from the market's own event listings:
- Thursday, August 20: Farm Night, live music and the Thursday market, 5 to 8 p.m.
- Sunday, August 23: 26th Annual Zucchini Festival, Sunday market hours
- Thursday, August 27: Farm Night, live music and the Thursday market, 5 to 8 p.m., closing out the market's expanded Thursday night lineup for 2026
- Sunday, September 27: Tomato Fest, with tomato and salsa tastings and a tomato art contest
The regular Sunday market itself continues on its own schedule through the first weekend of December, a separate rhythm from the Thursday night programming that just got its two extra weeks.
The Same Instinct, A Few Blocks Over
The market's decision to expand rather than wind down in its milestone year has a parallel happening in Windsor's restaurant scene, and it involves a name most residents already know.
Eric Foster opened Grata Italian Eatery just off the Town Green in October 2020, timing that would have scared off plenty of first-time restaurateurs. It didn't scare off Foster and his wife, Christina Keeney, and the restaurant built the kind of steady local following that keeps regulars ordering "the usual" rather than chasing whatever's trending that month.
Foster's next move is not an expansion out of Windsor. It's an expansion into it. He and his team are turning the long-vacant Windsor Brewing Co. building at 9000 Windsor Road into Spur Saloon, a casual, saloon-style pub built around what Foster describes as an "upscale Yellowstone lodge" feel. The menu leans into grazing food: ceviche, chips and dips, seasonal salads, cured meat and cheese boards, and barbecue, paired with a full bar. Foster has said he wants a space where the community can walk in, grab a drink and something to eat, and settle in for live country music, dancing, and karaoke.
What makes this worth mentioning alongside the market's Farm Nights isn't the menu. It's the choice of location. An operator with a proven concept and nearly six years of goodwill in one town had the option to open a second restaurant somewhere with more press attention, whether that's Healdsburg or Santa Rosa. Foster instead put his second concept a few blocks from his first, betting that the same three or four blocks around the Green can support two different kinds of nights out. That's the same logic the farmers market followed when it added two more Thursdays instead of closing out its anniversary season on schedule. Both bets say the same thing about Windsor right now: the people who know this town best are choosing to go deeper into it rather than out of it.
What This Means If You're Planning The Next Two Weeks
None of this changes anything about what the Green actually offers you this week. Thursday nights still mean live music, food vendors, and lawn games for another round. Sunday, August 23 means zucchini in every form the market's vendors can manage. And sometime this year, once Spur Saloon opens its doors on Windsor Road, there will be one more option for a weeknight out that doesn't involve driving toward Healdsburg or Santa Rosa.
The bigger pattern, if you're the kind of resident who notices these things, is that Windsor's civic life right now is being carried less by new town spending and more by organizations and operators reinvesting their own milestones back into the same handful of blocks. The market chose two extra Thursdays instead of a single anniversary party. Foster chose a second restaurant on Windsor Road instead of a bigger stage somewhere else. Keep that in mind the next time you hear that Windsor "doesn't get the press" other wine country towns do. Some of what makes a town worth living in doesn't show up in press coverage at all. It shows up in whether the people already here decide to stay and build more, which is exactly what's happening on the Green this month.
If you're weighing what a home near Windsor's Town Green district might be worth against the broader Sonoma County market, Sonoma Coast Living tracks these inland North Bay pockets alongside our coastal listings. View the Luxury Market Report for a fuller read on where value is moving across Sonoma County this season.
