A Saturday in Pukalani: The Farmers Market and Nearby Businesses

By 7:15 on a Saturday morning, the lot behind Long's Drugs at Kulamalu Town Center is already half full, and the good mangoes are already half gone. This is Pukalani doing what Pukalani has done every Saturday for more than three decades, and if you live here, you already know the drill: get there early, bring cash, and don't expect easy parking once the morning gets going.

What you might not know is how close newer businesses are to that Saturday routine. The Upcountry Farmers Market is the oldest fixture in this stretch of Highway 37, and other town-center businesses are nearby.

A Market That Outgrew Two Addresses Before It Found This One

The market didn't start at Kulamalu. According to Hawaii Magazine's reporting on the market's history, it began more than three decades ago as a small gathering at St. Joseph's Church in Makawao, then relocated to the Eddie Tam Memorial Center, also in Makawao, before finally settling into the parking lot at Kulamalu Town Center in 2010. Each move was really a story about outgrowing the previous space.

The person who oversaw much of that growth is Neil Coshever, who runs Sanctuary Farm in Kula and became market manager largely by default, back when the whole operation had shrunk to himself and one other farmer at Eddie Tam. Under his management, the vendor list grew from two people to more than a hundred by the time the market had settled into Kulamalu, drawing an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 shoppers on a good Saturday according to accounts from that era. That kind of growth is exactly what forced the earlier moves out of a church parking lot and a gymnasium in the first place.

The 2010 move to Kulamalu mattered for a reason beyond square footage. It put the market on a commercial corner that was still mostly empty at the time, next to a Long's Drugs and not much else. Businesses have opened around the lot since, alongside the market's established Saturday schedule.

The Brewery's Saturday Hours Near the Market

Mahalo Aleworks opened as the first brewery in Upcountry Maui, in a two-story space one block from the market, close enough that its own location page tells visitors to pick out their vegetables first and wander over after. The taproom's Saturday music set runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and the farmers market closes at 11.

That overlap leaves room to make a market visit and a taproom stop part of one Saturday outing.

The Brewery's Food Setup

The taproom has no commercial kitchen. Food comes from Upcountry Sausage Co., which grills sausage sandwiches on the patio, and from Restaurant Marlow next door, whose wood-fired pizzas are the only thing on Marlow's own menu that customers can order straight into the brewery.

Marlow is chef Jeff Scheer's restaurant, run with his wife Kaili, and it opened around the same time as the brewery next door. The two businesses even source some of their produce from the same local farm, which means the produce a shopper just carried out of the farmers market in a canvas bag might show up as a pizza topping an hour later, at a table fifty feet away.

Together, the three businesses give visitors several ways to spend time in the same corner of town, and their proximity makes it easy to visit more than one in a trip.

What This Actually Looks Like If You Live Here

If you're already in Pukalani, you've probably lived some version of this Saturday without thinking much about how the stops fit together. You get to the market before 8, because the flowers and the good produce move fast and Neil Coshever's vendors don't restock at 10. You make a loop, you talk to whoever's behind the Star Anise table or wherever the produce guy is that week, you fill a bag. Somewhere around 10:30 or 10:45, you notice the market thinning out, and if you're not in a hurry, you drift the one block over. By the time you sit down, the music's usually just starting, and there's a decent chance you didn't plan that timing at all. The market’s Saturday routine has been part of the area for more than three decades.

That longstanding routine gives this part of Upcountry a distinct Saturday feel: the market remains an anchor, with newer businesses, including the brewery and restaurant, nearby.

For anyone weighing what it means to put down roots in this part of Upcountry, that ordinary Saturday offers a glimpse of daily life a listing description may not capture.

I've spent more than two decades working across Central, South, West, and Upcountry Maui, and the towns that hold up best over time are usually the ones where you can point to something like this, a Saturday morning routine that continues as newer businesses arrive. If you're thinking about what daily life actually looks like in Pukalani, or anywhere else Upcountry, I'd rather show you the real rhythm of a place than a sales pitch about it. If that's useful to you, Harry Devery is one email away. Let's Connect.