When Delphine Sellars first saw the land where she’d revive agricultural activity, she felt an immediate connection. At that time in 2016, the old farmstead north of Durham had dilapidated structures tucked within years of overgrowth. It had been decades since the land had seen a plow. The old farm fields were anything but clear, but her vision was.
“I honestly said to myself, ‘this is it.’ Even with the state of deterioration that it was in. I said, ‘this is it.’ That was my word. ‘This is perfect,” Sellars recalled.
At the time, the land was part of a larger conservation plot owned by the Triangle Land Conservancy. Sellars was visiting the site with her sister Lucille Patterson, and they were looking to use the land for their organization Urban Community AgriNomics (UCAN). [author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://triangleland.org/[/author_image] [author_info]TLC works to permanently conserve land and has worked with NCDA&CS Farmland Preservation Division on some projects. TLC and the division have partnered on 17 agricultural conservation easements in Chatham, Johnston and Wake counties, preserving over 2,000 acres of working farms and forests in the Triangle.[/author_info] [/author]
“I said, ‘I’m at home. This is perfect,’ and she asked me if I had bumped my head,” Sellars said. “I said, ‘no, I haven’t. We’re gonna do it. How can we do this and we got less than $250 in the bank? I don’t know, but it’s going to be done.’”
That led to UCAN finalizing a land use agreement with TLC In November 2017. UCAN was simply allowed access and, with the help of volunteers, began clearing land and cleaning up in January 2018. Sellars and Patterson founded Catawba Trail Farm and Community Garden, bringing farming back to the land for the first time in more than 70 years, Sellars said.
Along with cleaning up the property, a small UCAN staff and many more volunteers have built and helped tend more than 45 raised bed gardens that are rented to members of the community. An old mill house has been renovated for office, classroom and meeting space. There’s a greenhouse, an in-ground planting area, a small orchard, bee hives and a chicken coop. All of it helps UCAN fulfill its mission.
“The goal is to teach people to grow their own vegetables – how to cook them and can them too,” Sellars said. “But the overriding benefit is increased wellbeing and health due to access to nutritious foods, outdoor spaces and a caring community and to increase food security.”
[box type=”bio”] UCAN’s Mission Statement: Urban Community AgriNomics’ (UCAN) mission is to reduce food insecurity, reduce and reverse preventable health issues, increase academic success, and increase exposure to career opportunities in the field of agriculture. UCAN’s focus is to improve the health and wellbeing of our community by providing access to open green spaces, education and trainings on healthy lifestyles, seed-to-table food preparation and preservation, hands-on STEAM and organic agriculture. We empower families and individuals with access to resources to grow their own healthy food using sustainable practices, in a supportive community environment. Our work is manifested through a lens of diversity, inclusion, environmental and social justice.[/box]
It’s a goal that’s rooted in her childhood growing up on a vegetable farm in Washington, N.C. As an adult she became Durham County’s first community outreach coordinator where she saw people unable to easily get fresh food. Then she became the county’s Cooperative Extension director, which brought her back into agriculture. Her combined experience led to want to do more to help people.
“It occurred to me, if all you do is accept handouts from people, you’re being controlled by other people. So you need to do for yourself as much as you can,” Sellars said. “I’ve always felt personally that from the earth comes it all.”
With that in mind, Sellars set out to create UCAN and aspired for it to also provide hands-on education in addition to fresh food.
On January 11, 2024, the Triangle Land Conservancy gifted the land to UCAN, further securing the future of the Catawba Trail Farm. An onsite farmers market was added in 2024, and renovations of an old corn crib building are in the works. It’s expected to expand educational offerings to young people while also providing a storytelling, presentation and meeting space for all generations. There are also hopes for a third building that would be a welcome center, museum and event rental space.
As an African American, Sellars said the farm brings feelings of coming full circle. She originally had no idea that the property had been a plantation where enslaved people worked the land prior to the Civil War. It was the Snow Hill Plantation, which was founded in 1763 and later became part of the Stagville plantation that covered 30,000 acres.
“It made this property more valuable to me than I would have ever known when I walked on it [that first time],” Sellars said. “I look at it as that’s where the descendants of enslaved are benefitting from the legacies that were left to us, which is agriculture – not because we have to, but because we want to.
“We see the benefits of the knowledge and skills that are associated with agriculture.”
With many more plans on the horizon – additional land clearing, lumber cutting, an expansion of the orchard and the building plans – Sellars can’t help but keep an eye to the past as she looks to the future. After all, the first day she saw the land isn’t the only time it’s spoken to her.
“It’s almost like a voice within me, when I found out that enslaved people worked here, a voice pretty much said to me, ‘what took you so long?’”