The Momentousness and History of the Lexington Farmer’s Market

The Lexington Farmers Market, founded in 2005, was an effort to provide more nutritious food for Lexington residents while growing the profits of local farmers.

Farmers who live next to Lexington say that food from grocery stores has become bland and dull. A local farmer, Genevieve Stillman, says, “People have forgotten how good, good food is. We’ve been trained to get apathetic about how good food can taste. Produce looks good at the supermarket, but tastes like nothing.”

Sonia DeMarta, an immigrant from Venezuela, echoes Genevieve’s opinion. “I bought apples at the grocery store. They were covered in wax and tasted mealy,” she says. Sonia longed for a farmers market like the one she had in Venezuela in her childhood. She reminisces, “They were in every town. They were messy and noisy. I loved going to them.”

Sonia was moved by a paper written by the author Brian Halweil, titled “Where Have All The Farmers Gone,” that discussed the problems farmers encounter from around the world, and promoted a local approach to build strong food systems.

So, with the help of her friend, Lori Deliso, she recruited a group of 15 local farmers and a large number of volunteers to set up the first Lexington Farmers Market on a Tuesday afternoon in 2005.

Genevieve believes that the presence of a farmers market is key to the development of a good local economy. “In Massachusetts, we vote on a minimum wage, regulating certain things. If you don’t buy from local farmers, then you have to bail them out in order to have them stay,” she says. “That’s not a good business model. Having to subsidize something to have it exist is not sustainable.”

According to the Lexington Farmers Market’s mission statement, it intends to “connects residents with local farmers and vendors, providing greater access to fresh, locally-grown and -produced food to community members of all income levels.” The Lexington Farmers Market has been doing just that from its founding to now.

In 2010, Lexington Farmers Market first accepted the use of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and it is committed to doubling the money that comes from SNAP. In other words, $1 of SNAP will buy $2 of food from the Lexington Farmers Market. While it is common now for farmers markets to accept money from SNAP, Lexington Farmers Market was the only farmers market in MetroWest Boston to accept SNAP. In just 2024, over $61,000 of money from a number of assistance programs was used to buy food from the Lexington Farmers Market.

In the 2020 global pandemic, governments noticed the growing need for food assistance projects like SNAP.

Today, Lexington Farmers Market is a 501(c)(4) organization with four sources of income that it uses to support its other projects, like Power of Produce (POP) Club, a loyalty program for families with children that supports Lexington residents who may need more help, following their mission statement.