40 Under Forty 2021: Grace Lam
Photo | Erika Sidor
Grace Lam
Photo | Erika Sidor
40 Under Forty, Class of 2021 members (from left) Alyssa Glennon, Ryan Hacker, Grace Lam, and Therese Susienka, DMD at Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston (Special thanks to Tower Hill)
- Title Owner & head farmer
- Company Fivefork Farms, in Upton
- Residence Upton
- Birthplace Boston
- College Emory University
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If you’ve been on Instagram in the last several years, there’s a solid chance you’re familiar with Fivefork Farms and its resplendent feed of blooming dahlias, fields of peonies, and bouquets of lisianthus. Boasting nearly 60,000 followers, Grace Lam, who worked as an international equities sales trader in a previous life, has found herself a niche market in high demand.
With more than 1,000 community support agriculture shares distributed over three seasons, people in New England just can’t seem to get enough of the flowers Lam grows with her family on a plot of land she purchased in 2013, after leaving the finance world. Lam shares her bounty with others, particularly social justice-oriented groups. In the last year, Fivefork has donated to the Asian Outreach Project at the Greater Boston Legal Services and Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, as well as donated plants and flowers to healthcare workers at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Mass. General Hospital in Boston, and Newton-Wellesley Hospital. Under Lam’s leadership, the farm partners with the nonprofit Ascentria Care alliance to provide employment opportunities to members of Worcester’s refugee and immigrant communities.
What world record would you like to have? Growing the world's biggest pumpkin
What is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you? The little kindnesses our customers display, like bringing coffee/donuts/snacks/dinner when they know we’re super busy at the farm, notes of appreciation in the mail, etc.
What Central Mass. community is best? Worcester, of course – totally underrated in terms of the food and the art scene
What items have you crossed off your bucket list? Flying in a helicopter (Kauai, Hawaii), leaving my corporate job to start a farm (duh!), seeing baby pandas in the wild (Chengdu, China)
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