Telling Stories Through Photos

About New Cahokia Commons Farm

#The Journey
# Our Team
#What We Do
# Where we Began | Our Goals

Sowing Into Growing

About New Cahokia Commons Urban Farm

Formed in 2021, New Cahokia Commons Urban Farm is an Illinois nonprofit organization dedicated to growing a farm-centered community rooted in wholeness, wellness & healing. Our farm grows healthy food and invests in BIPOC farmers (Black Indigenous People of Color) on five acres of top-grade farmland in Cahokia Heights, Illinois. Our land was once occupied by the Kaskaskia people who were part of the Confederated Peorias (1854) and who are descendants of the Cahokia Mound builders and are today part of Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. We acknowledge the Kaskaskia people and their displacement.

Our mission is to grow healthy food to heal people, the land, and the community.

NCCUF helps BIPOC individuals address trauma through entrepreneurial enterprises nurtured through real access to land.

What We Offer:

Beginning farmer training and farm lease sites that make land available to BIPOC farmers to grow their farm dreams.

Educational programs engaging children, teens and adults in agriculture.

Peer Networks that support learning through tours, talks, and training to strengthen farm enterprise skills and build market opportunities for farmers and growers.

Coming Soon! Field Trials! We will conduct various trials to explore methods to improve crop production, build climate resilient farming systems, try new or unfamiliar crops, and establish cover crops, native trees, and pollinator initiatives to feed the soil and support native ecology.

Our CSA. Our farm subscription provides a weekly harvest of nutrient-dense seasonal fruit, vegetables, herbs, and offers an option for added value items like eggs, honey and cheese. We grow organically without chemical poisons or fertilizers using the principles of regenerative agriculture.

NCCUF Grows
Community Rooted in Wellness & Healing

Our Founding Farmers

DeAndress Green

DeAndress has been feeding families from the soil to the table and has spent all of her adult life serving the impoverished and middle class communities with their finances. Her dream for our community is to open the doors of access wide open one farmland acre at a time. She brings her experience urban farming, gardening, landscaping and working in finance. She’s a brewer and distiller with a grain to glass dream.

Kathleen 'Kat" Logan Smith

Kat fell in love with Southern Illinois while serving as Food Works’ Executive Director, an organic farmer training organization in Carbondale. She’s been promoting local food since 2011 and has experience with farmer education, peer networks, food safety, community gardening, farmers markets, and growing, especially beets. She has worked for decades on environmental justice and policy issues, in community and as the Executive Director of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment and in organizations including the Interdisciplinary Environmental Law Clinic at Washington University and Slow Food St. Louis..

Danielle Martin

Danielle Martin, a beginning farmer that has strong family ties to Lebanon, IL; she services southwestern Illinois in St.Clair County. She has joined the team of New Cahokia Commons Urban Farm at the helm as the Board president. She brings with her experience in education, farming, agriculture, horticulture, aquaponics, animal husbandry, herbal medicine and nonprofit organization. Danielle shares our mission of building health and strength in the community through her business Herbal Farms. She raises and sells raised organic and free-range chickens, ducks, and produce. She has established a partnership network with a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization (ABM) Abundant Believers Ministry in O’Fallon and a state-recognized nonprofit (PHACT) Pearl Hall Arts Culture and Technology Center in Lebanon, IL. Both of these nonprofits seek to bring healing and restoration to the community.

Arianna Blakemore

Arianna Blakemore studied exercise science/kinesiology at SIUE and is now the Founder and CEO of ancient Healing Root where they teach people how to grasp and utilize the power of food, self-care, and detoxification as an empowering lifestyle. Arianna left the corporate world during the pandemic in 2020 to embark on her life’s mission to restore community. Due to that success, she is now a farmer of NCCUF and address food sovereignty, holistic health, and healing