The Stanley Cup at Waxy O’Connors in Lexington!

Photos by Jim Shaw

By Heather Aveson  |  Twenty-four years ago, John Moriarty was just looking for a little bit bigger garden. What he found was a hidden gem and the mantle of reluctant folk hero.

In 1987, John was living in Arlington running his wordworking and construction business and taking care of his backyard garden. It was something he had done since childhood, working with his dad in the family plot. But John wanted to expand his little 500 square foot garden and he mentioned to his real estate broker that he’d like a property with more room to grow. When he got the call that she’d found, as John says, “something she thought would work for him,” John bumped up and down the ruts of Bacon Street and landed on the 5.5 acres of the old Meeks farm. It was love at first sight. “I looked around and got totally fascinated. It was more than I ever expected. All I could see around me was farm and field.” John says looking across those same fields with the same kind of wonder he must have felt that first day.

The land is part of a swath of old Lexington farmland that runs from Marrett Road to Waltham Street. The land between Meadow Mist and Marrett Road is still being cultivated and the area behind the farm is now conservation land that stretches to Clarke Middle School. John did some research and found that his “Meadow Mist Farm” had been owned and operated for nearly 80 years by the Meek family. Originally a dairy farm, the family switched over to growing produce in 1930’s. Much of his history also comes from family members who continue to stop by. “Ever since I’ve been here members of the Meek family have dropped in and told me how wonderful it was growing up here or visiting family here.”

John moved into the old farmhouse and starting getting a handle on how to work his much expanded garden plot. “I got my first animals in late 1988. First I got a pig and eventually I got hens. Fundamentally, I learned by making a lot of mistakes.” John started out growing a good amount of corn, but it takes up a lot of space and you only harvest once a season. He still grows some corn, but has learned that succession crops like lettuces, greens and herbs give a much better return. And the pigs have given way to laying hens, chickens, lamb, and beef cows.

Meadow Mist didn’t start out to be a commercial farm, but John found he had way more than he could use so he reached out to friends and asked, “Would you like to buy some hamburger?” From there he started selling fresh eggs, chicken, beef, produce and strawberries on a limited, but growing, basis.

“When I came out here no one was interested in farms,” says John. He sees the recent push for local produce and local farming as a teaching opportunity. “Part of having this is to have people learn what really happens on a farm. It’s life and death. One thing balances another. It all has to be in balance.” This commitment to balanced farming will sound familiar to people who have read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Meadow Mist Farm has been using many of the techniques noted in the “Pastoral Grass” section of the book. Joel Salatin’s ‘Polyface Farm’ in Virginia is most people’s first introduction to integrated farming. But, Moriarty says, it’s a technique he’s been using for years. The idea is pretty simple. John puts it this way, “You can use animals to restore the land, put a lot of animals in a small area for a short amount of time. That’s the way animals do it nature.” By regularly moving the animals no one area is over grazed and dies. At the same time the grazing and animal manure left behind nourishes the grasses and helps them regenerate, building them up for the next grazing rotation.

At Meadow Mist this technique is used for both the beef animals and the chickens. Squares of pasture are roped off and the cows graze for a short period in one square until moved to the next. The same can be done with chickens.

And this is where Moriarty is facing a new challenge on the farm. Right now, he has one ‘chicken tractor’ in which about 30 chickens are pecking at the grass. A ‘chicken tractor’ is a 10ft by 12ft movable pen with open sides, a covered top and no bottom. Once or twice a day the pen is dragged to a new plot of grass. The chicken manure left behind is rich in nitrogen and helps the grass regenerate. It is a perfect example of integrated farming. The pastures at Meadow Mist could support at least 2 -3 more chicken tractors and John is anxious to expand that part of his operation.

In order to add more chicken tractors he will have to use existing pastures which fall within a wetlands buffer zone.

Before making a substantial financial investment, and in the spirit of compliance, Meadow Mist Farm has gone before the Conservation Commission seeking a ‘negative determination’ which would officially exempt the land from Conservation Commission jurisdiction. Here’s where it gets interesting.

Mgl310-04 is the Massachusetts statute that governs wetland buffer zones used in commercial agriculture. If the land is found to fall under this statute, it is exempt from local conservation commission oversight. Both the conservation commission and the farm owners are working with legal counsel to understand the technicalities of Massachusetts agricultural law as it pertains to Meadow Mist. The farm has many supporters and the complicated legal issue has everyone feeling the pressure. At the Conservation Commission’s May 24 meeting, commission member Stu Kennedy acknowledged the situation. “I’m really in favor of this kind of activity if it is in the proper exemption. We have to get to the kernel…Is the exemption in place properly?”

Meadow Mist may find out the answer when they meet with the Conservation Commission at its June 21st meeting. But, the commission’s answer is just one step in the expansion process. “Even if this goes through there are still a lot of approvals to get,” and Moriarty is concerned about the message being sent to small farmers, “These operations are so marginal, if you make it too hard, you’re going to push a lot of these people out.”

But Moriarty and his partner Lauren Yaffee seem committed to staying put. They are building a new farm house, which will make room for more growing fields, and John has just planted rows of tender young blueberry bushes that won’t be ready to harvest for another three years. So Meadow Mist farm is here to stay.

If you’d like to purchase from Meadow Mist Farm or visit the operation it’s always a good idea to call ahead to check availability. You can reach them at 781-354-5037 or www.meadow-mist.com.

By Judy Buswick |  “Keep your focus.” That’s what retired Lexington teacher Mary Keenan told herself. Like other researchers who rely on original source material to write new accounts of the past, she encountered tantalizing, curiosity-tickling tidbits that might have lead her away from her intended target. She had plenty of material to draw on for her new book, including 158 letters from the Lexington Historical Society’s collection of Robbins-Stone Papers. “In Haste, Julia” (Puritan Press, 2011) took Ms. Keenan almost twelve years to write and pulled her into the daily interactions and social upheavals of the nineteenth century. A Belmont resident with an AB in History and a M.Ed. from Tufts University, Keenan came to Lexington to teach English and History at the William Diamond Junior High in 1964; and in 1972 she went to the new Jonas Clark Junior High to teach history. As these schools became “Middle” schools in 1986, Keenan moved into Lexington High School where she helped develop the history curriculum and taught until her retirement in 1999.

She dedicated her book “to the hundreds of Lexington students who learned that both men and women are significant in American History.” As a history teacher in a town where local history is national history, Keenan realized early on that she should join the Lexington Historical Society. She found rich material about the men involved in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, as she worked with her students; but at one point she asked, “Where are the women?” Her quest for the answer led her to introduce a Women’s History Course at the high school and eventually set her on another course – that of book author. A quote from “Middlemarch” by George Eliot showed Keenan that to study women’s history she had to seek hidden lives lived faithfully. Eliot had written, “For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

Ruth Morey, the first woman president of the Historical Society, and S. Lawrence Whipple, an archivist treating Lexington history as if it were his own family history, had suggestions for women that Keenan might research. They brought out large boxes of Robbins-Stone family documents – “journals, ledgers, letters, wills and deeds, [and] memorabilia.” Ellen Stone was the first woman on the Lexington School Committee and might have been a subject, but she just didn’t strike Keenan as the one for her. Then she found the small diary written between October 1850 and November 1851 by the aunt of Ellen Stone. This undersized window into the life of Julia Robbins (1819-1900) convinced Keenan that she had found her subject. A maiden lady for many years taking care of her parents and sisters, Julia Robbins was interested in the political and theological issues of her day. Some of the people she knew included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May, the abolitionists Sarah and Parker Pillsbury, and Rev. Theodore Parker, another abolitionist.

Julia’s father Eli Robbins was a successful businessman and “a strong believer in freedom of speech and thought.” He built an elegant Grecian style hall in East Lexington for public speakers to share their views, and Julia was regularly in attendance. She had an Academy education in Derry, New Hampshire, and attended the School of Design for women in Boston, with the latter leading her to a career as a carpet designer for the Lowell Company in Lowell, Massachusetts. She intended to make herself self-sufficient. \When on May 17, 1860, she married John Barrett (1826 – 1890) of Concord, she continued her anti-slavery interests, followed the States’ rights controversy over slavery, and advocated for municipal suffrage for women, even as she took on duties as a farmer’s wife. The story of this independent-minded woman thus includes both Concord and Lexington social history, commentary on city and country living in the nineteenth century, and how one socially-aware woman followed her conscience and made a contribution to the liberties our nation enjoys today. Keenan faced the problem, as do all writers, of finding the best means to convey her research in a manner that would engage readers. Should she fictionalize her memoir with quotations she could never know her characters actually spoke? How much could she infer from the letters about emotions and family dynamics? She opted to exclude dialogue and to provide “thoughts and feelings of individuals … inferred from the factual evidence found in the primary sources and in the historical record.” Her extensive endnotes categorized by topics provide readers with her source material. Keenan found that the nineteenth century newspapers “had incredible, detailed stories” and she was able to read some original copies at the Boston Public Library. The Schlesinger Library at Harvard University had copies of the “The Woman’s Journal,” the weekly women’s suffrage newspaper to which Julia subscribed. The Boston Athenaeum allowed her to use the “Boston Almanacs” from the day; and so if she said there was heavy snow, then there really was. She read Lowell Company business documents at Harvard’s Baker Library. The papers of Parker Pillsbury are in the Wardman Library of Whittier College in California and librarians there searched for Julia’s letters written to Pillsbury and his wife. The New Hampshire Historical Society and several Massachusetts public libraries provided valuable source material; but Julia’s small diary from 1850-51 had two key components that Keenan used heavily. The seventeenth American Anti-Slavery Bazaar was held in Boston in December of 1850 and Julia spent several days working at it. She records who gave speeches, how Daniel Webster had abandoned the abolitionists by signing the Compromise of 1850, how the hall was decorated, and that the event was the social highlight of the season. Julia worked at the glassware table selling genuine Bohemian Glass and Britannia ware and raised $110. Other items sent from Ireland, England, Germany and France were also for sale. Autographs of Sir Walter Scott “sold for $5 each — a princely sum …when coffee was 12 cents a pound and molasses 27 cents a gallon.”

The other key information included in the diary was about Julia’s School of Design classes in 1851. Miss Ednah Littlehale intended her Boston school “to widen women’s opportunity for paying work,” and independent Julia aspired to do just that. From this training, Julia lived and worked for five years in the city of Lowell, earning her way and spending her money as she pleased. Mary Keenan knew that nineteenth century women did not just stay at home and care for children. They followed political interests like abolition and women’s suffrage and so Julia Robbins Barrett “was not alone in her beliefs.” She and others followed Ralph Waldo Emerson’s encouragement to “Build, therefore, your own world.” In so doing, Julia helped build ours. “In Haste, Julia” is available ($19.95) from the Lexington Historical Society, PO Box 514, Lexington, MA 02420. Or contact them at www.lexingtonhistory.org. Judy Buswick writes frequently for Colonial Times and is writing a book about Sally Palmer Field who championed quilting in New England. Contact Judy at jt.buswick@verizon.net.

By Laurie Atwater  |  A fierce advocate for poetry and spoken poetry, former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky will be coming to Lexington to help celebrate the launch of the latest book from the Student Publishing Program at Lexington High School, Unsaid: Poems from Lexington High School’s Class of 2013.

The Student Publishing Program (SPP) at Lexington High School was created in 2002 by Lexington High School graduate Anthony Tedesco (LHS 1987).  Tedesco has dozens of projects and ideas in the air at any given time. His work can be found in Details magazine, Saturday Night Live, Boston Globe and the 2010 Sundance Award-Winning film, Homewrecker, and he’s director of The Greatest Living Writers Project which features exclusive video of poetry and best writing advice from over 500 of the world’s top poets.

Despite his busy schedule, Tedesco has consistently maintained his dedication to the Lexington High School project that he co-founded with Karen Russell, English teacher at Lexington High School.  Russell began teaching in Lexington in September of 1980 and has taught English, Social Studies, and Reading and Language within the Lexington Public Schools.  Together with an impressive advisory board, Tedesco and Russell have nurtured the Student Writing Program—even in the years they struggled for funds and published only online.

This year the SPP is excited to once again be in print thanks to the generosity of the William G. Tapply Memorial Fund.  Tapply, a member of the LHS Class of 1958, was a well-known outdoorsman and writer of both essays on fishing and two well-known mystery series.  Tapply taught in Lexington at the high school for 28 years, retiring as a “House Master” in 1990 to write full time.  Later in life he returned to teaching at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. and at Emerson College in Boston.  Tapply died in 2009.  His fellow classmates came together to create the fund in his honor.  Thanks to the gift from the Tapply fund and the Lexingtonians who have contributed to it, students will once again have the unique experience of seeing their work in print.

More than 500 pages, Unsaid would not be possible without the dedication of all the LHS sophomore English teachers who have supported students in submitting over 400 poems. Tedesco’s professional design creates a high quality platform that pays tribute to the students’ accomplished writing. The Student Publishing Program gives one hundred percent of profits from book sales back to LHS to fund future participation.

BOOK LAUNCH     On Tuesday, May 24^th, the SPP in partnership with Craig Hall and Lexington Community Education will host a special program and fundraiser to celebrate the launch of Unsaid and to raise funds to support next year’s publication.  

The public is invited to attend this event and support the young writers who have conquered their fears and allowed their very personal poems to be included in the book.  Attendees will see the book for the first time, meet the student authors and hear the award-winning Lexington High School Jazz Combo during the reception.

The program will be emceed by Craig Hall, director of Lexington Community Education. Lexington residents will have the opportunity to hear students read selected poems from both this year’s publication and from upperclassmen who have contributed to previous online editions. The program will also feature readings by Lexington poet and Robert Frost Medal winner X.J. Kennedy.

ROBERT PINSKY     U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky will talk about poetry and what it means to him and read from his latest book Selected Poems. Pinsky is an advocate for young writers and poetry. In 1997 Pinsky was named poet laureate and he served until 2000. During this very public phase of his career, Pinsky launched a great new project that he called The Favorite Poem Project.  Everyday folks were asked to submit their favorite poems and some of them were invited to read their poems as part of a permanent audio archive at the Library of Congress.  This “people’s project” connects to Pinsky’s beliefs about the need for poetry in a democracy and the value of the spoken word.

Pinsky currently teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Boston University and is poetry editor of the weekly Internet magazine Slate. He is a man of varied talents—translator, editor, multi-media innovator and teacher. He is the author of five books of poetry, four books of criticism and a computerized novel. He has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, Poetry magazine’s Oscar Blumenthal prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 (1996) won the 1997 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Come and celebrate one of Lexington’s most worthy student endeavors, hear some great poetry and music and pick up the new book from LHS students.

Quotes About The Book And Its Publisher, The Student Publishing Program:

“These talented, imaginative young poets have made works using the always-fresh, always-unique, forever-new, yet ancient instrument of their voices. The individual voice is the instrument of poetry, an art that as this collection shows is on a human scale, individual and communal. I congratulate the writers, their teachers, and us their audience.” – ROBERT PINSKY, former U.S. Poet Laureate, professor in the graduate writing program at Boston University, Poetry Editor of the online magazine Slate, Advisory Board Member of The Student Publishing Program, and author of SELECTED POEMS.

“To any writer, writing always seems more a meaningful act if it results in publication. In bringing out UNSAID, Anthony Tedesco and the Student Publishing Program have accomplished something rare and valuable. This book and this program strike me, to the best of my knowledge, as the most remarkable gift to student writers that anyone has offered in America.” – X. J. KENNEDY, Lexington poet, winner of the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry, and author of In A Prominent Bar In Secaucus: New & Selected Poems.

“Words have great power. As School Committee Chair, I use words at the intersection of advocacy and policy. Sometimes, even advocating for the words that seem most meaningful and powerful at the policy level will influence the tone and meaning of all the words down the line. In a similar way, this poetry project has provided our students with an experience reflecting the power of their own words in meaningful expression.” – MARY ANN STEWART, Chairman, Lexington School Committee, Lexington Public Schools

Creating a portfolio of written pieces based on models of good writing sets student writers on a course that they navigate for themselves.  Teachers, then, have the opportunity to become active listeners to what each student feels is the composition to publish, to render explicit what was previously unsaid. – KAREN RUSSELL, Lexington High School Teacher, and founding teacher of The Student Publishing Program

What the students say:

“Being a part of this publication made me feel like I could share things that I can’t otherwise say.” AMBIKA JAYAKUMAR, LHS class of 2013

“I can’t begin to articulate how refreshing it is to have a teacher ask me for my own thoughts and writing I can truly call my own.” VERENA LUCKE, LHS class of 2013

“The poem project allowed us to stretch the boundaries of imagination, talking about things we would have never thought of sharing with anyone.” AISHANI PATWARI, LHS Class of 2013

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Unsaid: LHS Sophomore Poetry Book & Launch Event

Tuesday, May 24, 7pm
LHS Auditorium 251 Waltham St., Lexington, MA

Readings by Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, Robert-Frost-Medal-Winner X.J. Kennedy and a selection of LHS sophomores reading from their new book, Unsaid: Poems from Lexington High School’s Class of 2013, along with poetry from other classes and music by LHS’s award-winning jazz combo. The public is invited to come support them as student authors, as sons and daughters and friends, as young Lexingtonians, and perhaps most of all as unique, courageous individuals sharing what they’ve often been unable to say, offering glimpses at who they really are – in their own words.

For tickets, book pre-orders please visit LHS.225pm.org or call 800-705-6551. Books ordered before May 24^th can be purchased for $24; after May 24^th books will sell for $34. Event tickets are $7 in advance; $10 at the door. LHS students admitted free with student ID.