Young Ag Society

An agro-culinary community for Durham's youngest growers

Part of The Recipe. Young Ag Society

This program honors Chef Melanie's relationship with Durham, her grandmother, and the community that raised her — because for her, it all started in the garden. The Young Ag Society is rooted in that origin: the belief that the garden is not just where food grows, but where young people discover what they are capable of, and what it means to be in community with one another.

Young Ag connects youth to the full story of food — from the soil where it starts to the table where it lands. Participants learn to grow, tend, and harvest their own ingredients, developing a relationship with the land and with their food that goes deeper than any cookbook.

Because good cooks know where their food comes from. And young people who grow their own food know what they're capable of.

The Ingredient.

Every great dish starts before the kitchen.

Before there's a knife, there's a seed. Before there's a recipe, there's soil. Young Ag Society is where Kind Kitchen Group's work begins — at the root of it all, literally.

In partnership with Fayetteville Elementary, Duke Campus Farm, and Durham's community garden network, Young Ag participants don't just learn about food. They grow it. They tend it through every stage — from seeding to harvest — and then they bring it into the kitchen and cook it themselves. The full arc. Start to finish. Scratch to table.

The program is built around three core commitments: care for the Earth, care for each other, and care for oneself. Young people rotate through soil beds together, working with new peers at every session so that everyone's hands have touched every part of the garden. The harvest belongs to all of them — because they built it together.

What Our Young People Learn

"I can grow food. I can feed myself and my community."

"I am part of something larger than myself."

"We are each other's harvest, business, magnitude, and bond."

"I care for the earth. The earth cares for me."

"I am capable of growth — and so is everything around me."

Most young people in Durham have never touched soil outside of a park. Many don't know where their food comes from beyond a grocery store. Young Ag changes that — not through a lesson, but through the act of doing it together.

When a student plants a seed, tends it over weeks, harvests it with their own hands, cooks it with their peers, and shares it with their community — something shifts. They understand, at a cellular level, what it means to be responsible for something. To be patient with it. To see it through.

That is leadership. That is community. That is what we're growing.

What Makes This Different

The Harvest

We are each other's harvest. We are each other's business. We are each other's magnitude and bond.

— Gwendolyn Brooks

Young Ag participants don't just keep what they grow. The harvest goes further — shared with the Fayetteville Family Resource Center, potentially vended at the Durham Farmers Market, and eaten together in the garden in a culinary session that closes the loop completely. Growing becomes giving. Tending becomes community care.

The harvest isn't just food. It's evidence of what you can build when you tend something with care.

Our Partners In The Work

  • Fayetteville Street Elementary

    Garden space & student cohort

    Fayetteville is where Young Ag lives. Our garden is located on their patio — four to six soil beds conjoined with the art classroom, designed so the space itself becomes part of the learning. Fayetteville's students are our cohort, their staff are our collaborators, and their campus is proof that a school can be a place where young people grow in every sense of the word.

  • Duke Campus Farm

    Growing expertise & volunteer support

    Duke Campus Farm brings working knowledge of sustainable agriculture directly into the garden alongside our students. Their team provides hands-on guidance on growing practices, lends additional volunteers to help facilitate sessions, and connects our young people to a broader ecosystem of people who take food, land, and stewardship seriously. They show our students that caring for the earth is a practice — and a profession.

  • Root Causes Serenity Community Garden

    Community garden guidance & setup

    Root Causes Serenity Community Garden helped us understand what it actually takes to build and maintain a thriving urban garden. Their insight on setup, structure, and community engagement shaped how we designed our space — and reminds us that Young Ag is part of a longer tradition of Black and Brown communities growing food together in Durham. We didn't start from scratch. We started from community.

  • Duke Pratt School of Engineering

    Program support & institutional partnership

    Duke's Pratt School of Engineering brings additional capacity, resources, and institutional partnership to Young Ag — connecting KKG's community-rooted work to academic expertise and student engagement. Their involvement reflects what's possible when universities and neighborhood organizations build toward the same goals.

  • Durham Farmer's Market & Fayetteville Family Resource Center

    Harvest distribution & community connection

    The harvest doesn't stop at the garden gate. Our partnership with the Durham Farmers Market and Fayetteville Family Resource Center creates a pathway for what our students grow to reach the broader community — through potential vending opportunities and direct resource sharing. When students see their produce leave the garden and feed their neighbors, growing becomes giving. That's the lesson no classroom can teach.

The Throughline

How This Fits The Recipe

Every KKG program is one step in a larger process — a recipe for what happens when young people are trusted with real tools, real responsibility, and real community. Young Ag is the first step: the ingredient. The thing that has to exist before anything else can be made.

Without roots, nothing grows. Without the soil, there is no dish. This is where it starts.

→ Explore The Recipe — see how all five programs connect

Feed This Work

Young Ag runs on soil, seeds, partnership, and people who believe our young people deserve to know where their food comes from. Here's how you can support it:

Donate — your gift funds seeds, soil, tools, and the supplies that keep the garden growing. Every dollar stays in Durham.

Volunteer — if you have farming, gardening, or ecological education experience and want to get your hands dirty alongside our students, we want to hear from you.

Partner — restaurants, chefs, and food businesses interested in sourcing from or collaborating with Young Ag participants: let's talk.

Share — follow our harvest on social and bring someone new into the garden.