Champaign-Urbana may be best known for top-tier academics and Big Ten athletics, but the story of this place extends far beyond campus. Champaign County is also home to small farms, local makers, celebrated food and drink, quiet trails, open skies, and people doing thoughtful work rooted in the land.

The Clearing is taking shape on former row-crop ground just outside Urbana. Like much of Central Illinois, this landscape was once part of an expansive prairie ecosystem shaped by deep-rooted grasses, seasonal water, scattered oaks, and an extraordinary diversity of plants and wildlife. Its rich black soil eventually made the region exceptionally productive farmland—but also contributed to the near disappearance of Illinois’ native tallgrass prairie.

We are beginning a different chapter for these 15 acres.

Over time, portions of the property will be returned to native prairie, oak savanna, pollinator habitat, trees, and water. This is not an instant transformation or a perfectly finished landscape. Restoration is patient work: planting, observing, tending, and allowing the land to become more diverse and resilient with each passing season.

The Clearing is part of a broader Champaign County story—one that includes regenerative farms, local food producers, the Kickapoo Rail Trail, protected natural areas, and some of the darkest skies in Illinois. Together, these places reveal a quieter and often unexpected side of Central Illinois: deeply agricultural, naturally beautiful, and shaped by people who care about what will be passed forward.

Your stay helps support this ongoing work while giving you the opportunity to experience it firsthand. You may arrive when the prairie is newly planted, when the young oaks are still small, or when the first pollinators begin returning in greater numbers.

The Clearing will never look exactly the same from one visit to the next.

That is part of the story—and part of the reason to return.