December has always been a busy month at The Land Connection, but this year was one for the books. For the last few months, we have been working with Liberty Prairie Foundation to transition their Northeast Illinois FarmLink program into the new Illinois FarmLink. As a part of that transition, we welcomed Nathan Aaberg and Jeanne Janson to our team at The Land Connection this month, along with new Illinois FarmLink Navigator’s Kyle Reed and Noah Scalero.

So what does this mean for Illinois? For years, The Land Connection, Liberty Prairie Foundation, and our partners around that state have been hearing from farmers and farmland owners looking for assistance in their quest to buy, sell, or lease farmland. We have been working to find a solution and a statewide FarmLink website and team of service providers seemed like the answer. Illinois FarmLink will offer farmers and farmland owners a higher degree of expertise and knowledge when it comes to finding farmland or finding someone to buy or lease farmland.

We still have some work to do building the new website for Illinois FarmLink, which will be located at www.illinoisfarmlink.org (a site built by Liberty Prairie Foundation with support from Food:Land:Opportunity), and our team will continue their training to build the skills needed to serve our community. You can expect to hear more from us in the New Year, but in the meantime, please join us all in welcoming Nathan, Jeanne, Kyle, and Noah to The Land Connection!