Support Your Local Farmer's Market, It'll Do Ya Good.

Hanna Cole On Regenerative Farming and How Groovy Farmer’s Markets Are.

This could be a personal thing, but farmers markets always inspire me to live my best fruity, flowery life. I will admit my initial attraction was just for the flowers and to get a groovy shot for Instagram. Although my love for flowers has not diminished whatsoever, I have found out there is so much more to a local farmers market than just the blooms.

Through the past couple years I have grown a passion for plastic free living and shifted towards being more connected with this planet we live on. I dove very deep into this with being so inspired by the endless inspiration through social media, podcasts and books on all things about the zero waste movement and all that earthy jazz. I had never before drawn the connection that daily actions such as what I ate for lunch- or even what kind of container it was in, could make such an impact on the well being of the planet. Doing things like bringing my own coffee mug and maneuvering the art of dodging single use plastic was so empowering to me. From my own actions I have people all around me commenting on how cool it was which is what inspired me to start my living_lite page. I use it to share beauty products I love, recipe ideas and anything I find as an easy and accessible alternative. I also saw a lot of preaching and judgment around this movement. I had to take a step back to focus on how I wanted to approach inspiring others rather than making them feel the massive weight on their shoulders that comes from reading literally one article on anything related to the environment these days. I want to somehow remove the stigma that you have to be perfect in order to make a difference, but instead to doing things that work for you in your own life. We need less people judging others on the harm they’re doing to the Earth and more people making sustainable change in their life that will radiate change to others.

I took some classes at UHMC in the Agriculture program and learned so much on regenerative farming and was able to tour many farms here on Maui. I was blown away by how much effort the farmers put into keeping healthy soil that will keep improving over time to provide food for future generations. These practices aid in reversing climate change by increasing soil carbon stocks. Without getting too deep into the science because I am no expert, it just feels amazing to know you can support the farmers doing this amazing work just by buying their produce. With the majority of our islands food source being outsourced, eating the food that has been grown on this land brings so much connection to the food we eat.

Spending my Saturday mornings at the Farmer’s Market and supporting local farmers is such a special way of having a sense of belonging in the community. Seeing the connection of getting your food from the source brings so much more life to the food. I have found it to be so much easier to get all my goods plastic free along with so many unique products. Talking to the people who grew the food brings another level of depth to it al that you don’t get from the supermarket. I want to inspire people to get excited about ingredients that grew right here and create something special at home. Grab your basket, cruise around the market and find the stories behind the food, it tastes better when aloha was poured in every step of the process.

You can learn more about living a more eco-friendly lifestyle on Hanna’s blog Living Lite! (We highly recommend!)

Words: Hanna Cole (@hanna_ccole)

Photography: Malia Yamashiro (@malia_nicole)