Dinah: Welcome to Farm to School Northeast, a podcast where we explore the creative ways that local food is getting into school cafeterias and how food system education is playing out in classrooms and school gardens across the northeast. On March 18th, 2026, Massachusetts Farm to School held their biannual Farm and Sea to School conference at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Over 350 participants joined in from all areas of the farm and seed to school movement. There were educators, farmers and fishers, policymakers, food service staff, various nonprofits, school administrators, secondary and college students, and more. The conference theme was Building Connections, Resilience, and Joy. And the opening plenary was a storytelling session where five people in the field shared a true and personal story from the heart that embodied the conference theme, be it a moment of challenge, joy, surprise, or change that reminded us all why this farm and seed to schoolwork matters.
These are the stories you will hear in this podcast episode. And we will hear from Rina Zampieron, education program manager from the early education program at Massachusetts Audubon, Lizzy Agbadun, advocacy manager at Project Bread, Sarah Littman, Director of Food and Nutrition Services at Triton Regional School District, Tim Offei-Addo, farmer at Abrantie Farms, and Melissa Honeywood, Deputy Director at the Boston Mayor's Office of Food Justice. We hope you enjoy hearing these stories.

Dinah: In the spirit of our conference theme, building connection to resilience and joy, I'm very excited to introduce five storytellers, each of whom has developed a story related to our theme to share with us all today. From farming and food service to the classroom and food access, each story you are about to hear comes from a different corner of this work, yet all are threaded through with the same spirit, building connections, resilience, and joy in farm and sea to school work. These are real stories offered with honesty and heart, a lot of heart, reminding us of why this work matters, who it serves, and what is possible. So our first storyteller today is Lizzy Agbedun, who serves as the Advocacy Manager at Project Bread, Massachusetts’ leading anti-hunger organization, where she turns community power into policy wins. In her Nigerian tradition, Lizzy's grandmother and mother named her the tree of happiness, a calling to be rooted in strength and to offer shade, nourishment, and joy to others. And this is evident in both Lizzy’s spirit and her story. So please welcome to the stage, Lizzy Agbedun. 

Lizzy: How’s everybody doing today? So when I say Story, story-o, you reply, Story. You ready? Yes. Story, story-o. Story. Story, story-o. Story. Story-o. Story. Story. 

So I'm Lizzy and when I got this chance to share my story, I couldn't help but think about my childhood, right? My childhood is a gold mine of memories because it taught me how to love. Sorry. Growing up in Nigeria on our streets, my family was known for loving Eba, which is like a meal made from cassava. And the reason is because we have family members outside the city who would ship like bags of cassava to us on a tiny motorcycle because anything fits on a motorcycle. And we had so much that neighbors would stop by to get some cassava. And even though I got so tired of eating it, eating it all the time, it was something that was always there for me and my community when there was nothing.

So I learned that love is when I have cassava, my neighbor eats cassava. I also had a very beautiful grandmother who was a fisher woman, and she would wake up before the crack was done, tie her wrap, her scarf, get her dolled up. No fishing gear in sight, by the way. And she'd hum and leave the compound. But when she comes back, she's coming back on a truck with tubs and baskets of fish and crabs and neighbors are stopping by to get some and she's complaining about it, but she brought extra to share. And the kids would stop by, we'd play. The adults were smoking the fish, cooking the crabs in all sorts of ways. It felt like a festival, but that taught me that love is when I have fish, my neighbor eats fish. And we also had a generator named Diesel, that we used to pump water from the underground well since our government refused to provide steady access to clean water. And even though we pumped all the time and we made the water free, neighbors would chip in so we can buy more fuel and keep pumping the water, even though it was free. I mean, if you were a kid that pissed me off that week, you have to pay. So I learned with that, that love is when I have water, my neighbor drinks water.

I learned to lead with love and cherish my community. And even when the world doesn't make sense, I go back to the things that raised me, the cassava just showing up by her doorstep, on the motorcycle, the fish that's wrapped as a just in case maybe someone stops by too late and they don't get fish in time. The water that keeps flowing and keeps nourishing because everyone chipped in. And I just hope that my story of love inspires you to beyond this conference to join me in building a world where no one is left behind, even if the system is broken. So story, story-o, Story.. So there might be people coming on who are nervous, so my fellow presenters are coming on stage, just send them some spirit fingers.

Dinah: All right. Thank you, Lizzy. Our next storyteller is Rina Zampiron. Rina serves as the statewide early education manager at Mass Audubon. She has spent over 14 years teaching at and developing nature curriculum and works with early educators across the state, offering professional training in early nature and farm-based education. Rina says that she has taken to dealing with overproduction or late ripening by just pickling anything and everything she can. So welcome to the stage, Rina Zampieron.

Rina: Thank you everyone. And you and I are going to chat later about you making me go after Lizzy. All right. So my early introduction into nature started with three tiny little pine trees between my house and two other neighbors, because we were in massive suburbia and I would be going on these wild missions where I was collecting berries and pine cones to save for later as my food. And when I truly needed an adventure, I would go the half mile down the street to High Rock, which is, as you can imagine, a high rock, covered in graffiti. But in the middle of this suburbia, there were these tiny little pink lady slippers that would come up. And I was like, "Man, this is nature, right?" And so as an adult, when my husband and I started looking at a place where we could start our family, we happened to find a house and lo and behold, lady slippers grown in the front yard, right?
And I'm like, "Okay, now this is going to be awesome. My kids are going to have the best time. We have this huge wilderness in our backyard and they are just going to explore." Yeah, I really should temper those expectations. It became clear very early on that I had not given birth to a nature explorer. And so cue, 2020, the world literally shuts down on my daughter's birthday and I'm going to call her M, because I want to respect her privacy and I'm like, "Okay, this is it. Now I have a chance to take my daughter out into the wilderness and she is going to love it " And about five minutes into our first nature walk, we've got our picnic basket and our magnifying glasses and out we go and she starts crying. And I'm like, "Honey, what's wrong?" And she's like, "The stick poked me." And that was pretty much the entire three hour walk. And so we get back and we've seen all this cool stuff and I'm like, "Honey, did you have fun?" And she's like, "Yeah, but let's not do it again." Okay, I have completely failed as a mother. Here I am– I have given my child this incredible space to be out in the wild and explore nature and she wants another thing. And so we get a little bit older. I started this huge garden and in general, she's not so keen, but there are these glimmers of hope where I'm sitting there and I'm starting the garden for the year and she sees me using the hoe and she's like, "Mom, can I have a turn?" And I'm like, "Here you go, kiddo." And she takes the hoe and goes, "Wapow!. Right in the garden! I'm like, "Yes, I've got her." Yeah, no.
So I'm trying, really, I'm trying to get her to doing this garden thing and I start up a garden club at my synagogue and the entire time she was like, "Do we really have to be doing this right now?" And I'm like, "Honey, it's fun. We're going to be gardening. We're going to be cooking." And she's like, "No, I don't think so. " But we're trying to push through and we're trying out some recipes that I'm going to bring to the club and I find this recipe for chocolate surprise cake. The surprise is BEETS.
And my daughter tastes this cake and she's like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing." And so we're going to bring this recipe to the garden club and she's like, "Mama, don't tell them what it is. It's a surprise." So we get there and I'm not planning to make this for a couple of weeks, but heaven help me, she has now gotten all the kids here, "We're going to make chocolate surprise cake." It's a surprise!” The whole time, right? And they love it, right? But there's just something about her glee that we hid the vegetables, and I can see it. I can see that hope in there and maybe she is never going to be that nature superhero that goes out and saves the world. She may not be that kid who ever enjoys taking a nature walk because a stick might poke her, but sometimes it's enough that they just like chocolate beet cake.

Dinah: Thank you, Rena. Our next storyteller is Tim Offei-Addo, a farmer at Abrantie Farms. Inspired by his Ghanaian roots, Tim started farming in 2022, growing specialty West African eggplants, ginger and more. With a mix of traditional and ethnic crops, Tim strives to introduce tropical flavor to the New England farm scene. Welcome to the stage, Tim Offei-Addo.

Tim: All right. So a couple years ago, I got this internship with the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya. It was a perfect opportunity for me to begin my career. I just graduated from Amherst College and I was like, yes, sorry, I'm about to get into international development. This is a place that I belong. There was just one small problem. It was 2020. So naturally I was at home, nine hours different time zones, nine hours behind, at three or four in the morning in Massachusetts on Zoom calls with my colleagues in sunny Nairobi or rainy Glasgow. It was a time, but it was kind of a God working his magic. Instead of going to Nairobi, I did that internship and then I started working for the Boston Area Gleaners. And through that opportunity, I've done a variety of things. I've gleaned thousands of pounds of produce.
I've led volunteer trips. I've even got stuck or almost drowned in the back of a pickup or a dump truck with apple pumps. Well, I wasn't really drowning, but I was definitely getting sucked under.

Mostly what I do there is that I drive trucks, small trucks, big trucks, broken down trucks, dump trucks, all of it. I drive trucks and it's really an experience. You learn a lot about how food gets to and fro, from the distributor, from the farmer, from the process there, to the schools. And there's one time I was in JP in Boston in a 26 foot truck, and in Boston, these roads there, it's for a horse and buggy, it's not for a truck. And I'm sitting in traffic, it's 96 degrees outside. I got the windows down, the truck, the AC is not working, and I'm just kind of sitting there contemplating lights like, Bro. Why didn't I go to Nairobi? Why am I not in Ghana? And I look out the window and there's a black man in his sedan car. I'm high up, I look down at him, whatever. And I'm looking out there and I do a double take and I'm like, I'm looking and I see him- he's eating something and I go, "Bro, you eating Oxtail?" And he's like, "Yeah, you know it. " We had a little moment, went back and forth. Traffic moves on as it does and I just sit back in my seat and I kind of smile to myself, I think about what I'm doing on my farm. I'm thinking about the callaloo, bitter ball, garden egg and my favorite. I'm thinking about those crops and how I'm striving with other farmers in this area to make culturally appropriate crops mainstream, to make sure that we all are as comfortable as that brother sitting in his car, eating Oxtail in JP on any day, anywhere.

Dinah: Thank you, Tim. Our next storyteller is Sarah Littman, who serves as the Director of Food and Nutrition for Triton Regional School District on the coast of the state, serving students in Newbury, Rowley, and Salisbury. Sarah is a registered dietician with a passion for nutrition education, equitable access to food, legislative advocacy, and food puns. Her greatest pride is her contribution to the passing of universal school meals in Massachusetts, and Sarah is a theater kid at heart. So we welcome to the stage, Sarah Littman.

Sarah: So if you know me, if people in this room may know me, you may have heard me say that I grew up food insecure. Now food insecurity, a lot of people will think, "Oh, that means their family didn't have enough money to eat," but that's not necessarily the case, especially in my case. And food insecurity really means not having access to affordable, nutritious food. I'm going to try really hard not to sway, but if you give you sea sickness, I apologize, so I'm going to pace. So in my house growing up, we didn't really have any fresh fruits and vegetables. Our vegetable choices were canned corn, mushy, overboiled, grayish green peas, canned halved potatoes, which the texture wasn't so bad, but they were so bland, so I would have to put barbecue sauce on them just to make them a little more palatable. But anyways, fresh fruits and vegetables weren't a thing in our house, so I grew up thinking,”I don't like fruits and vegetables.”

So fast forward to when I was 18, I went out to college and I will never forget walking into the cafeteria and seeing that salad bar, those bright, beautiful red peppers and those snap peas that would just crunch when you ate them. Most people gain 15 pounds when they go to college. I lost 15 because I was at that salad bar every single day. So fast forward to my early 20s, I decided to become a self-sufficient human and teach myself how to cook. So my first obstacle was learning to cook vegetables. So I did steamed green beans, delicious. I added edamame to stir fry, yum. But friends, let me tell you, the first time that I cooked roasted broccoli, it truly changed my life. It was, I'm not kidding. It was a life changing experience. I have the tattoo to prove it.
So now fast forward to I'm 27 and I love vegetables so much that I was like, "I'm going to go back to school for nutrition." I felt like I couldn't be the gatekeeper for how delicious fruits and vegetables were, so I wanted to learn about the nutrition and teach it to anyone who would listen essentially. So fast forward to today, I know I don't like it, but I'm in my late 30s, but I'm a Food Service Director and I get to serve fresh fruits and vegetables to over 2,500 kids every single day. And it's so important to me because like I experienced growing up, I know that some of my students may not get access to those fresh fruits and vegetables at home. I'll never forget the first time that we offered cantaloupe to our students and I had this cute little pre-K student say, "Wow, this is so delicious. It's just like watermelon without the rocks." Everyone in this room has things that led them to where they are today. For me today, I'm a registered dietician, I'm a school nutrition professional, but most importantly, I have become the adult that I needed as a child.

Dinah: Thank you, Sarah. Our next and last story teller this morning is Mellissa Honeywood, who serves as the deputy director of the Mayor's Office of Food Justice. Mellissa is a chef, a dietician, and an advocate for equity in food systems. Mellissa has the privilege of working alongside some inspiring folks throughout her career, and each interaction has informed her understanding of our complex food system. Welcome to the stage, Mellissa Honeywood.

Mellissa: I was 27 years old when I started as Food Service Director for Cambridge Public Schools, and as my former coworker and now current director of Cambridge Public Schools likes to remind me, when he first found out about my age, he said, "I have shoes older than her." Thanks, Anthony. I may have come across as a young hotshot with big ideas of school nutrition and farm to school excellence, and perhaps it borderlined on annoying. But fun fact about Cambridge, it's home to one of the oldest schools in the country. The Cambridge Latin School was founded in like 1648, and fortunately for me, when I first started as Food Service Director, the high school had been recently renovated, and it was beautiful. It had wide, colorful hallways, and these big windows that lit in tons of natural light, and I walked into the main dining area in this newly renovated high school, and there was a piece of infrastructure right in the center of the cafeteria that can be best described as a dirt pit. It was four feet wide, 40 feet long, and it went along the access ramp up to the cashier station, and where the average onlooker might have seen, I don't know, a festival of gum wrappers and ancient construction debris and very dusty dirt, I saw potential. Now, don't get me wrong, I wasn't disillusioned enough to think that we were going to be growing rows of kale and cabbage that was going to fortify our salad bar, but I thought if we could at least get some rosemary and thyme, maybe a cute little herb garden in there, it would be a win. It was a low bar, high reward situation, and at least the type of project that would prove I'd be worth more than Anthony's 30 year old pair of shoes.
But I knew I couldn't do it myself. I couldn't rid this dirt pit on my own, so I went full Huckleberry Finn. I reached out to the administrators to give me the green light. I was wheeling and dealing with a DPW to say, "You take the old dirt out, bring in some new dirt. We'll get in some compost." And I even reached out to the school's sustainability teacher there, and she was like, "You know what? I have students that need extra credit. They'll come in to help dig, get extra credit in my course." I reached out to the city's Sustainability Manager, and I told her, "You get to be part of that great soil transition. Come on down." And to anybody who would listen, I was trying to convince them, "You know what? This is not just a dirt pit. This is not just some soil in the ground. This is an opportunity for an intergenerational Agricultural Opportunity."

And it was, it worked. We were there with our shovels and we rolled up our sleeves and in the matter of hours, all the bone, dry, ancient dirt was moved out, and in was put this beautiful, dark, rich soil. And it was an amazing moment. It was intergenerational. It was intersectional. It was just the type of collaboration that gives you the warm, fuzzy feeling. And I was basking in that glow and that warm, fuzzy feeling as we were waving goodbye to the DPW truck as it hauled away the haunted dirt of yesteryear. And I heard one of the students say, "Dude, your booger's are black." And sure enough, all of us had a range of soot around our nostrils because the dirt was so dry that when we went in with our shovels and it become airborne. And so we had essentially hot boxed the entire cafeteria. And so everyone left to go home, wash up, and just hoped that no one contracted a Victorian air lung disease.

Needless to say that my visions of universal praise for the Great Soil Transition were dashed the following morning around 5:36 AM when I got a call from the head custodian because the term “when the dust settles” is not a euphemism. 

Because the next morning the dust had literally settled on every single surface, every table, every chair, anything horizontal. And to say that the custodians were less than pleased would be an understatement. And so I drove there, I showed up and I apologized, and I listened, I took what was coming to me, I got the complaints and business went on as usual and I didn't want to hide. I wanted to show that I was still there and while I may not have followed through on my original vision and my original deliverable for the city, I still got to walk away knowing that this was, for better or worse, my introduction to the district and I got to show them that I will show up, I'm going to roll up my sleeves, I'm willing to admit my mistakes and I'm willing to listen.

And if you walk into that cafeteria today, I would like to tell you that you'll see like a microgreen Eden producing beautiful stuff for the school kitchen, but honestly it's Maureen Spinetti, one of the cafeteria workers there who is just keeping some house plants going with a DIY irrigation system that's really just inverted soda bottles. So.. 

In this work, I feel like we judge ourselves for missing the mark on our grand vision or that our grand vision is taking a little bit longer than we anticipated, but what I find is that even in these moments and in these challenges, the connections that we make yield way more dividends than the length of time it takes us for our plans to truly blossom. Thank you.

Dinah: This podcast is a production of the Northeast Farm to School Collaborative. For more information about this podcast or Farm to School in the Northeast, go to northeastfarmtoschool.org.