About Dig In

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, who at the time was the Community Support Coordinator at Just Roots, approached former Greenfield School Food Service Director Greta Shwachman and the two applied for a MA FRESH (Farming Reinforces Education and Student Health) grant to establish a cafeteria taste test program, 3rd grade field trips to Just Roots, and an indigenous food systems lesson series in the 3rd grade classrooms.

Since then, Dig In has expanded to offer new programs including school gardens, after school cooking and garden clubs, and family cooking workshops. Dig In now works with multiple school districts, libraries, community centers, and housing complexes 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.

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.

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

The Dig In Team

Kyle Zegel grew up in a suburb north of Boston and attributes his father’s Sicilian family of imbuing within him the love of all things food and the understanding that cooking is one of the greatest ways to express care and respect for those around you.

Because of these familial values and the experience of food insecurity in his childhood, he decided to attend the University of Massachusetts Amherst from which he graduated in 2020 with a B.S. in Sustainable Food and Farming with a dual concentration in Agricultural Education and Commercial Production. Kyle has continued to pursue additional education including a Permaculture Design Certificate from Whole Systems Design, ServSafe Manager Certification, and trainings in deescalation and trauma informed nutrition security.

Kyle has a combined decade of experience in food systems education, commercial vegetable and livestock production, and food access program coordination. When he isn’t working hard at Dig In, he enjoys spending time hiking and playing outdoors, cuddling with his cats and a good book, making music and performing on stage, and cooking for loved ones.