Once regarded as the domain of greenies and idealistic university students, farmers’ markets are now in vogue and not by chance.

If someone said, ‘Pick what you want to do for the rest of your life,’ this would be it. We absolutely love it. We’re food crazy.

We live in a time when we can get everything we want almost instantaneously, but for more and more people, buying food from the person that grows it is more important than having year-round access to what was once considered seasonal produce.

Farmers’ markets demolish the distance between farmer and buyer and they reconnect they us with the origins of our food.

The Abbotsford Convent Slow Food Farmers’ Market, on the fourth Sunday of every month, is one of four monthly markets run by Melbourne Community Farmers’ Markets.

The stalls at the Abbotsford market wind their way around the old convent buildings, fitting in unobtrusively.

This easy arrangement is the first thing I notice as I wander through the grounds and it seems to reflect the philosophy of trading food without compromising the environment.

The second thing I notice is the sense of community.

People shop without urgency, stopping to ask a stallholder how their daughter went with her school concert and exchanging recipes with other market goers.

It is this sense of community that Alison Peake, coordinator of the Abbotsford market, believes to be the cornerstone of why people are returning to farmers’ markets in droves.

“People see the [stallholders] as their friends and someone they want to help and support, so it certainly gives them a lot more of a personal stake in it.”

Farmers’ markets herald back to a time when we had a better understanding of how food we eat arrived on our plates.

Alison is a slow-food enthusiast and is shocked at how out of touch we have become with our food.

“In my childhood you had milk delivered to the door, you went to a small local shop and you knew your butcher. Even in one or two generations, we’ve lost all of that and our food systems have become totally depersonalised. Farmers’ markets are putting that personal relationship back into it and creating community out of that.”

Stallholder at the Collingwood Childrens Farm market Areti Anagnostellis echoes this sentiment and says that farmers’ markets represent a chance for people to directly support the person growing their food.

“You get to speak to the farmer; you get to give the person the money who is doing the hard work, instead of going down to the supermarket.”

Growing up in a Greek household, fresh food played a big role in Areti’s upbringing.

“It’s the things we did without even thinking. My family has always eaten seasonally. My parents always ate what was in the garden.”

Vic Stasey, whose family have been farmers since they moved to Australia in 1935, believes that the rise in popularity of farmers’ markets comes from a more practical reason: the freshness and quality of the food.

“They buy produce from [the supermarket] and it doesn’t last as long; it isn’t as fresh.”

Seasonal eating, fresh produce and a knowledge of where our food comes from are all logical reasons for choosing farmers’ markets over supermarkets.

But as I leave the Abbotsford market with green bags overflowing with colourful produce, I can’t help but feel that there is something else at play.

What is it that draws so many people to farmers’ markets?

A few days later while talking to Areti, she gives me my answer:

“If someone said, ‘Pick what you want to do for the rest of your life,’ this would be it. We absolutely love it. We’re food crazy.”

Farmers’ markets return to us a passion for food and that is one thing that can’t be bought from a supermarket.