A farmers market is the icon of holistic, healthy, locally grown fresh food. Even though I brag about this fact every week in this newspaper, I must admit that you can often find me sitting at home eating tortilla chips from Safeway rather than snacking on crispy peas or crunchy carrots.

It’s so easy to go to Safeway any hour of our day and grab shelf-stable goods to chew on, but our health would prefer we had some fresh items in that diet. So, we have to plan ahead. We will spend weeks planning a hunting trip or days scheduling when we can fit in our dipnetting this year, and now we need to also plan for veggies?

Fresh food is a rare commodity here at the end of the supply chain. Anyone who has grown their own tomato can tell you the difference between that fresh, locally grown treasure and what you can find in the store. It is worth hunting for.

But is it hard? Not really. Farmers are constantly trying to reach customers in new and better ways. Yes, of course, there is the Homer Farmers Market on Wednesdays (2-5 p.m.) and Saturdays (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.). This is a well-known mainstay.

There is also the online farmers market, the Alaska Food Hub. You have Friday through Monday to shop with your favorite local farmers online, creating a box of fresh and local products that you can pick up on Wednesday afternoons.

Like a hunter who gets the lottery for a specific tag, if you can score a spot on a farmer’s subscription list in the spring then you are set. Different farmers set it up differently, but it means you get a box of fresh veggies as often as you like without much effort at all on your end.

And now there is even a new Farmers Market you can visit up in Nikolaevsk. On Thursdays from 4-7 p.m. down Dubova Road in downtown Nikolaevsk you can see even more local options.

So no matter what your hunting style, plan ahead this week for your harvest of local veggies and enjoy the freshness of the season.

Kyra Wagner is the coordinator of Sustainable Homer and the Homer Farmers Market’s biggest fan.