Alex Foster Lemay

Alex Foster Lemay

November 23, 1985 – January 10, 2025

It is with great sadness that we announce the sudden passing of Alex Lemay on January 10, 2025. Alex was instantly killed in a fatal collision, but the family can find some solace in knowing that no one else was badly injured. Alex had been following an interesting path in life, and it is unfortunate that we will never know which road he would have taken next. He leaves behind friends and family throughout the world and has touched so many different people in his short life. Alex had recently turned 39 years old.

Alex was born at home in Chimacum, Washington on November 23, 1985, between snow storms. His parents had recently purchased 5 acres and were building a home. The family did not have electricity or running water for the first few years of his life. One of the only shows he watched when he was young was Mr. Rogers, and he became so much like that gentle, caring, loving man.

Alex attended the Port Townsend Cooperative Playschool when he was only one year old. He continued at the Tri-Area Cooperative Preschool and then went on to the Chimacum School District. While in high school, he took advanced placement classes and did Running Start. He played baseball and created many clubs with friends. He played board games and other social games. He believed in good, clean fun and welcomed anyone into his circle who wanted to avoid a darker path. He graduated Chimacum High School in 2004.

Alex then went to Whitman College, switched his science and math focus to philosophy, and got his undergraduate degree in 2008. He spent one summer hitchhiking across the United States by himself, later hitchhiked around Europe with his sister, and took another extensive trip with friends. He went to France to teach children English and pursued a second degree in Classics while in Perpignan. He transferred to the Sorbonne in Paris to get a PhD in philosophy. His studies were interrupted by a return to Seattle to work in finance, but that lifestyle was not for him, and he returned to Paris.

At the start of the pandemic in 2020, he suddenly left France, thinking that he would return in a few weeks. He spent that summer with his lifelong friend, Grant Jones of Hungry Hollow Farm. Grant mostly raised chickens and practiced rotational grazing, but he also raised a few cows and pigs. Alex fell in love with the pigs, which makes sense given that they are such intelligent animals. In the fall of 2020, Alex bought 10 piglets. They were picked up in the back of an old Volvo. His father, Bob Foster, had given Alex permission to bring those piglets to the old family home, a place that Alex loved so much, and Foggy Hog Farm was born. He went on to lease land in several places. Another lifelong friend, Kyle Beckhorn, started out as his main farmer, and his niece and nephews spent many hours playing with the pigs while he was still in the Chimacum area. His mother, Sue Lemay, could often be seen on the farm and at the markets, and John Edwards, his mother’s partner, volunteered to train several employees and help in the construction of pig houses and other practical matters as Alex was getting his start in farming.

He moved his farm to Port Orchard, but still needed to better centralize his operation. Alex had just found the ideal spot to raise his animals and was in the process of leasing it. According to his mother, he died with the hope that he could carry on his dream of regenerative agriculture, the humane treatment of farm animals, and quality meat for his customers. The family has decided on terramation, or human composting, for Alex. In the words of Randi Flick, who worked farmers markets for Foggy Hog Farm and helped with the CSA program, “I think that Alex would be grateful to be able to give back to the earth one last time. Compost is a very him thing to want to do.”

Alex leaves behind his mother, Sue Lemay (partner, John Edwards); his father, Bob Foster (wife, Joyce); his sister, Amy Lemay; his niece, Matilda, and nephews, Wilder and Dashiell; his best friend, Olivia Rall; and many extended family members who are too numerous to name. A memorial service will be held at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (QUUF) in Port Townsend on March 15 at 1 pm.

Family and friends are invited to share memories of Alex and sign the online guestbook.