There's "green" — a broad term for everything humans can do to reduce damage to the planet.

And then there's "brown" — brown for the soil, brown for farmers' hands that work it, brown for a commitment to keeping that soil safe, clean and lifegiving, and brown for those who fill their paper shopping bags with the fruits of that soil, helping to keep farmers on the land.

Pamela Boyar dreams in both green and brown. She envisioned a farmers market that would not only sell and serve local, seasonal and, where possible, organically grown products, but also operate in as green a manner as possible, banning plastic foam, recycling its waste, favoring sellers with an equally strong green commitment.

The result is the Haleiwa Farmers Market, which Boyar and business partner Annie Suite opened in April at the intersection where Kamehameha Highway and Joseph P. Leong Highway ("the bypass") meet and which has been drawing gentle, meandering crowds every Sunday since.

But Boyar's true heart is in the brown. Has been for years. Her goal is to lead more people back to the soil — persuading and helping farmers to expand and refine their operations and helping consumers learn how to grow food for themselves and to appreciate the value of what's grown for them.

IN THE BEGINNING

Back in Southern California, where she grew up, Boyar, who was then pursuing a raw diet, began seeking out the best and freshest produce for her own purposes in the late 1970s. By the 1980s, she had become one of the first professional organic "foragers," roaming Ventura County in her old truck chatting up farmers and buying their best to sell to trendy Los Angeles restaurants.

Her business began with Farmer Mason of Mason's Tomatoes in Barstow, Calif., who grew juicy, ripe tomatoes in soil in a hothouse operation that Boyar would deliver to Wolfgang Puck's Spago and Nancy Silverton's Campanile in L.A.

In 1990, burned out and seeking a simpler life, she sold her business to a Los Angeles specialty food company and moved to Austin, Texas, in 1990.

A few years later, she went to work for Whole Foods, leading farm tours and organizing a farmers market centered in front of the flagship Austin store. In 1997, she left Whole Foods and founded the Sunset Valley Farmers Market in a parking lot loaned by the local school district. She began with a dozen vendors; now the operation has 100 sellers each Saturday.

After 10 years, during which she took only four Saturdays off (two for conferences, two when her mother was dying), she decided she needed a vacation and headed to Hawai'i. Before the vacation was over, she'd told her business partner she wasn't coming back.

"I knew I wanted to live here for the rest of my l life," she said. "I fell in love with swimming in the ocean."

And also with the Islands' potential for going back to the brown.

IN THE BAG

Boyar, who says she eats about 75 percent local, began to think farmers market right away after she moved to Kailua. But it took some years to make the right connections. Boyar and Suite are still wrestling with the permitting process so the market can move to a permanent site near the North Shore Marketplace on the Waialua end of town.

Though things have gotten off the ground well, there are daily challenges. She just learned that the bags they've been using, which they thought were biodegradable, aren't. So they're switching to the one brand they could find that's truly biocompostable (breaks down safely in the soil). She dreams of something biodegradable that can compete in durability and flexibility with the Ziploc bag.

They asked all vendors to use biocompostable containers (no Styrofoam) and not to use waxed paper. Boyar has been delighted to see how creative some have been. One vendor, Twigg Pacific Farms, wraps wares in ti and banana leaves, as in Southeast Asia.

The farmers market maintains one recycling station, but it has to be staffed, to keep visitors from throwing forks into the animal feed. They've been able to limit their trash to about one sack a week — the rest of the waste going to animal feed, recycling or composting.

"We are definitely not 100 percent green. We are trying, and you have to go as fast as you can. But you also have to take into account that we're all human and people make changes very slowly," Boyar said.

For Boyar, the Haleiwa Farmers Market is more than a place for selling and buying.

"One of our main missions is to ... get more small farmers farming and growing. We have an informal partnership with Kamehameha Schools to try and get more land for farmers. We just got our first farmer five acres, and he's committed to growing organically there," she said.

PROJECTS AHEAD

A marketing expert who sees helping farmers sell themselves as her mission in life, Boyar has a pocketful of projects in hand and in mind.

In September, there will be a series of Haleiwa Farmers Market-sponsored farm tours, each visiting one specialty farm, one animal product, two fruit or vegetable operations, with emphasis on the North Shore.

The market has applied for a $100,000 USDA Farmers Market Promotion Program grant to create a brochure for farmers markets on how to go green. The request also includes the purchase of a commercial composer, so visitors to the market could bring in their biocompostable waste (paper plates and such), receiving mulch or compost back in return.

Boyar hopes someday to attract an important agricultural conference, such as that of the American Farm-Direct Marketing Association, to the Islands, or to host some kind of a local talk-story for farmers and food producers.

Boyar envisions a second, sister market, too.

She can't stop dreaming of brown: "Once I get a vision, I love to go ahead with it and make it happen."