About New Cahokia Commons Farm

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.

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, 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 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