Our Story
Dig In started in 2023 with a simple idea – to bring vibrant food, farm, and garden education to Greenfield Public Schools. Dig In Founder and Director Kyle Zegel approached former Greenfield School Food Service Director Greta Shwachman and the two applied for a MA FRESH grant to establish a cafeteria taste test program, 3rd grade field trips to the Greenfield Community Farm/Just Roots, and an indigenous food systems lesson series in the 3rd grade classrooms.
Since then, Dig In has expanded to build a school garden program in Greenfield, has brought the taste test program to new districts, and has plans to continue to grow to support farm to school in western Massachusetts!
Our Mission
Our mission is to support children and teens in cultivating confident, curious, and empowered life-long relationships to food and the natural world through providing accessible hands-on opportunities to experience the joys of growing, cooking, eating, and sharing.
Our Vision
We envision a future in which every student at every school in western Massachusetts and beyond is offered scratch-made, nutritious, locally sourced school meals, engaging field trips to local farms, vibrant school garden programs, robust culinary education, and is empowered to continue to explore the multitude of life affirming ways to engage with the food system far beyond their formal education.
Our Values
Joy over Judgment: Healthy food without shame or moralization
Student Voice & Agency: Children are active participants, not passive recipients
Keep it Local: Prioritizing local farmers, collaborations, and solutions
Equity & Access: Programs designed for diverse cultural and learning needs provided at no cost to families
Social Justice: Pedagogy that engages with the complex histories of systemic oppression,
dispossession, and erasure of the lands, cultures, and lives of black, brown, and indigenous people locally and regionally
Learning by Doing: Hands-on, experiential education
Curiosity: Encouraging youth to be inquisitive, critical, and to “keep digging” rather than accepting information at face value
Food Literacy
We believe that if today’s youth are to be equipped to grapple with the existential threats facing them from the climate crisis to rampant food insecurity to widespread authoritarianism and oppression of the working class, they will need to develop food literacy, defined by Tracy Cullen RD (et al) as:
“the ability of an individual to understand food in a way that they develop a positive relationship with it, including food skills and practices across the lifespan to navigate, engage, and participate within a complex food system. It is the ability to make decisions to support the achievement of personal health and a sustainable food system considering environmental, social, economic, cultural, and political components.”
For more information about food literacy in Massachusetts schools, please refer to the important work being carried out by The Campaign for Food Literacy coordinated by the Massachusetts Food Systems Collaborative.
The Dig In Team
Kyle Zegel (he/him),
Founder & Director
Kyle Zegel grew up in a suburb north of Boston and attributes his childhood experience of food insecurity and his father’s Sicilian family of imbuing within him the motto “food is love” which has become the moral backbone of his work.
He graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2020 with a B.S. in Sustainable Food and Farming before working for 6 years on local farms and food access non profit Just Roots, starting Dig In, and receiving a School Garden Coordinator Certificate from Oregon State University. He is currently in the Professional Chef Program at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts.
Kyle’s combined decade of experience in food systems education, commercial agriculture, food access programming, food service, and in-depth understanding of local food systems has proven indispensable to the schools he works with. When he isn’t working hard at Dig In, you can find him gardening, foraging, wildcrafting, cuddling with his cats and a good book, making music, and cooking.