About LexFarm
Welcome to the website of the LexFarm. We are dedicated to providing education in the community about farms, farming and sustainable land use. We hope to do that by establishing a community farm on the town-owned Busa Farm property. On June 3, 2013 LexFarm submitted its proposal in response to the Town of Lexington’s RFP for a community farm to begin operating in 2014.
History, Organization and Leadership
LexFarm began in May, 2009 as a grassroots organization founded by three neighbors concerned about the fate of the 7.9 acre Busa Farm upon its sale to the Town of Lexington who had initially decided to use the land for soccer fields and affordable housing. Thanks to tremendous community support, LexFarm helped the the decision around, and in March, 2012 the Selectmen decided most of the land would be dedicated to a community farm with approximately 1/2 acre devoted to affordable housing. LexFarm is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
LexFarm Officers and Board of Directors
Janet is a software professional dedicated to using her skills to build and strengthen communities, especially through projects involving environmental missions. She has extensive experience organizing and managing teams of people in both business and volunteer settings. In addition to co-founding LexFarm in 2009, Janet has led and volunteered with several “growing projects” in Lexington. These include being a Lexington Farmers’ Market Manager in 2009 and designing and maintaining the Market’s website for its first five years. She is also active with the Lexington Interfaith Garden and the Lexington Field and Garden Club. She serves as a Lexington Town Meeting member from Precinct 1, where she sponsored a citizens petition in 2010 that gained Town Meeting approval to “support and encourage farms and farming in Lexington into the future. She and her family live in the 1789 farmhouse of the former Reed Dairy Farm and host a CSA micro-farm for Rad Urban Farmers in their back yard.
Ken has lived in Lexington since 1992. He is a senior strategist at MathWorks, with extensive experience in long-range planning, product marketing, and business development in the software industry. He has been a CSA member at Lindentree Farm in Lincoln, where he came to appreciate partaking in and contributing to local organic food production. Ken was inspired by the LexFarm vision for a community farm in Lexington, and joined its effort to keep the Busa property as a working farm and educational resource. He joined the Board of Directors in 2012.
Derek’s work with LexFarm is the perfect blend of his business experience & personal interests. He has been a licensed Certified Public Accountant for the past 10 years, and currently works as the Corporate Controller for a venture-backed software start-up. His focus over the past several years has been helping the growth of small companies. He and his wife share a desire to teach their children a love of nature and where their food originates. To that end, they were members of the Food Project CSA in Lincoln from 2009-2011, host a Rad Urban Farmers micro-farm since 2010, and created and continue to expand their own backyard garden. Derek has been a member of the Board of Directors since 2010.
Nancy has lived in Lexington with her family since 1996 and her children attended the Maria Hastings Elementary School. In 2001 Nancy was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the State Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs for Excellence in Environmental Education for her work developing an educational garden. In 2002 Nancy was a successful grantee and sponsored an Americorps team at the Hastings School that helped install a permanent exhibit of children’s mosaic artwork in commemoration of retired teachers, and helped to create a nature trail for use with the school’s Big Backyard E.E. program. Nancy has participated in CSA shares from both The Food Project and Linden Tree Farms in Lincoln, and she has experience working in the Food Service Industry. Nancy served on both the Hastings and Diamond School Councils and is employed as an Instructional Assistant at the Lexington Children’s Place special education preschool.
Jay is an IT specialist for the Smithsonian Astrophysics Data System where he leads the development team building a search and discovery interface for a digital library of Astronomy and Astrophysics literature and research data. He was a co-founder of the LexFarm organization and has served on the Board of Directors since it’s inception. From 2010-2012 he also served as a member of the CFO Board of Directors, overseeing the Waltham Fields Community Farm , including a 1 year term as Treasurer in 2012. His activities, interests and hobbies include cooking, competitive rowing, urban planning and land use, digital libraries and open source software development.
Brenda joined LexFarm’s board in 2011, and has spearheaded our membership program. She is an environmental analyst at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Prior to moving to Lexington in 2009, she lived in Newton where she quckly became a big fan of the Newton Community Farm. She has enjoyed being a CSA shareholder of Picadilly Farm in Winchester, NH for the last 3 years, is a member of the Waltham Fields Community Farm, and has been pleasantly surprised by the success of her own vegetable garden.
Betsy has lived in Lexington since 1993. Betsy has worked as a software engineer for over 25 years. Betsy has been involved in the movement to help people become aware of the sourcing of their food as a volunteer for the Lexington Farmers Market and through her support of other summer and winter farmers markets in the area. She has held CSA shares from Chestnut Farms and Parker Farm and looks forward to this summer’s CSA share from Waltham Fields Community Farm. Betsy is starting her second season as a backyard beekeeper. She writes about her concerns about the food system, her passion for local foods, and other food-related musings on her blog, A Plateful of Happiness.
In 2009, Charlie founded Rad Urban Farmers to change landscapes into ‘foodscapes.’ He has over a quarter of an acre of land in yards across Lexington in production; supplying vegetables for his small CSA, the Lexington Farmers’ Market, and his landowners cooperative. In 2011 Charlie planted out his ’89 Ford pickup to create Boston’s first educational mobile farm; visiting over twenty-five sites over the summer in underserved areas throughout the metro area. Prior to micro-farming, he taught 3rd grade in Belmont, MA.
Josh has worked as an electrical engineer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory since 1999. In 2010 he took a year-long leave-of-absence and, along with his wife, spent a year traveling and “WWOOFing” (WWOOF = World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, also sometimes known as “Willing Weeders” On Organic Farms). The majority of the WWOOF stays were in New Zealand and included work at a permaculture and micro-alternative-energy teaching facility; a hydroponic salad greens business (he wonders if it’s heresy to say that they were the best greens he’s ever tasted); a vineyard; and in several “homestead”-type settings involving various levels of food and energy self-sufficiency. After returning, Josh was thrilled and heartened to discover the LexFarm endeavor and is very excited by the prospect of a community farm coming to fruition on the Busa farm land.
Please feel free to contact us by email if you have any questions: info@lexfarm.org