Our farm is located between Smithtown Seafood and West Sixth Brewery at 501 W Sixth St, in Lexington, Kentucky. All of our growth is done in what used to be the oven room for the Rainbo Bread Factory, providing us with control of our light, temperature, and humidity, and biological infestations, no matter the season. This building is one of Lexington’s most historically interesting industrial sites, surrounded by residential neighborhoods and including Lexington’s earliest communities of freed slaves after the Civil War. When the 90,000 square foot factory was vacant, it became a liability for all the surrounding family homes, yet now is occupied by a wide range of community minded businesses and nonprofits, working every day to bring greater assets to our city and fellow residents.

Since its inception, FoodChain has been dedicated to showing the links, not just in food systems, but also communities. Our farm is only a part of what is being done in the building we occupy. We share our walls with a craft brewery, a seafood restaurant, a nonprofit incubation hub, a bike co-op, an art studio, coffee roasters, roller derby league, and a bourbon distillery! That’s a lot of community in one spot! We are not an isolated unit: our success is dependent upon all of our neighbors, we are able to support each other and grow as symbiotically as possible. The tenants of this building are linked with the knowledge that we are all stronger together, and our goals are to demonstrate increasing resiliency and economic development through partnerships and collaboration.

FoodChain’s farm grows tilapia and fosters catfish in partnership with Kentucky State University. These fish currently are sold to Smithtown Restaurant alongside microgreens, lettuces, leafy greens like collard, kale, and chard, as well as exotic herbs.

Our microgreens are sold to other restaurants throughout Lexington in partnership with Blue Moon Farm who has sold local product to chefs for decades here in central KY. We also  distribute microgreens, herbs, sunflower shoots, and pea shoots through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares and through the Bread Box Farmers’ Market, a seasonal community of small producers who set up on Bellaire, just outside of our farm space. With microgreens sold directly to consumers we include information on nutritional advantages to microgreen consumption and recipe ideas for their tasty and easy incorporation to any meal!

All of our plant growth is vegetative (no fruiting or flowering) in order to maximize our space, light, and the fast turn over that lettuce and greens allow us! Sales from the farm create a self sufficient economic model which we share with producers interested in exploring aquaponics. All of our fundraising efforts go toward education and outreach, while income generated through sale of fish and produce is used to cover the costs of running our system!

If you would like to contribute to our efforts please consider an educational donation, time volunteering with our farm, or in kind donations  of seeds, cleaning supplies, nets, tools, or building materials. To make in kind donations or just learn more about connecting with our farm, contact our farm manager Jerry@foodchainlex.org.

Come tour our farm! We have public tour every Saturday at 1pm! Tours are $10 for adults and $5 for kids. This is a great educational experience where you’ll learn the details of the aquaponic cycle, how and why our system was built, and you’ll even get to meet a fish!

Tickets can be purchased in advance here or purchased the day of at the door with cash, card, or check!

If you are a school, association, large private group, or have special needs then we can accommodate private tours. Fill out this form and we will contact you to make arrangements. For best results please contact us at least two weeks in advance to schedule private tours.

Sign up here to volunteer on the Farm! This can include: harvesting fish, harvesting lettuce, transplanting, cleaning, general maintenance and much more. This is a great opportunity to see the ins-and-outs of working with an indoor farm, working with plants in a soil-less system, and aquaculture skills! All training and information is included in your volunteer hours, so come get your hands dirty (ish)!

We also have room to accommodate large group volunteer opportunities. If interested in this please email Rebeccah@foodchainlex.org for more information!

FoodChain works with schools to host tours in our farm, provide unique intern and volunteer opportunities for students, build aquaponics systems scaled for the classroom, create lesson plans to accompany the 10 gallon mini-systems, and provide offsite education through tabling, career days, science fairs, classroom lessons, and more! To book us for any off site educational experience please contact Reena@foodchainlex.org. We currently have aquaponics systems in 23 schools in Fayette County, including all public elementary, STEAM Academy, Tates Creek Middle School, Crawford Middle, Edith Hayes, and Jesse Clark. Our mini-aquaponics systems allow students to interact with plant life cycles, animal life cycles, water cycles, nutrient cycles, chemistry, math, and biology during a time when most traditional outdoor garden education is not available due to the season. We are currently not doing installations in 2017, however any inquiries or resource requests can be directed to our Education Director, Reena Martin (reena@foodchainlex.org).

Since 2013 FoodChain has hosted 29 interns on our farm! These have been students from Lexington high schools and colleges from all over central Kentucky. If you are a student or teacher and would like to find out more, please fill out this form and you will be contacted shortly for more information. Interns at FoodChain can get involved in the daily cycles of the farm, planting, harvesting, caring for the aquatic life, water quality, and general maintenance of a unique farm system. There is a plethora of opportunities for interns to create and develop individual projects utilizing the resources here at FoodChain to explore their own unique interests in a supportive learning environment.