Late winter and early spring make one thing clear about agroforestry: it produces lots of sticks!
As the Horn Farm continues to develop agricultural teaching spaces informed by agroforestry–an approach to farming that integrates trees and shrubs to produce abundant and ecologically healthy landscapes–we’re finding that the “yields” go far beyond the berries and nuts. To start this growing season, volunteers and staff coppiced willows, harvested live stakes, and pruned elderberries, all producing one common denominator. Before we knew it, we had imposing pile of “biomass”: dead branches, sticks, and twigs galore!
By thinking like an ecosystem, farmers, gardeners, and land stewards know that a dry pile of branches isn’t the end of the line. Decomposing wood makes for great habitat, either left untouched or assembled into wildlife stacks in woodland areas. Or, with just some biodegradable twine and muscle, surplus wood can be tied into tight brushwood bundles and placed along the edges of streams, capturing sediment and helping to curb erosion in riparian areas. We could even ignite our biomass harvest into a bonfire, enjoy some s’mores, and call it a day!
But there’s another, more direct way to leverage a pile of wood for the continued nourishment of the soil that produced it: biochar.
Students gathered for Dale Hendrick’s biochar demonstration at the Horn Farm.
Earlier this June, we invited longtime horticulturist and friend of the farm Dale Hendricks to provide a public demonstration on producing biochar at a home scale. With juicy mulberries in tow, Dale gave a stirring talk on the history and science of biochar, which has its roots (like many ecological farming practices) in Indigenous land management, from the Amazon to Africa. Producing biochar has helped people across history maintain fertile, abundant landscapes, taking the surplus that the land provides and returning it to the soil in way that concentrates what plants need most to thrive.
Put simply, biochar is made through burning woody biomass in a high-heat, low-oxygen environment. This controlled burning method generates a charcoal-like substance that can be added to soil to:
Improve water retention,
Enhance nutrient availability,
Foster healthy microbes, and
Keep excess carbon out of the atmosphere by storing it the ground long-term.
Dale Hendricks demonstrating his two-barrel biochar system. After igniting the biomass that’s been packed into the elevated bottom barrel, he placed a second barrel on top to manage oxygen exposure and concentrate the heat of the flame. Through the gap between the barrels, students could monitor the breakdown of the biomass.
There are many ways to produce biochar, with different designs based on scale. Pit and pyre burns are used for larger quantities of biomass, while for the small farm or home garden, Dale demonstrated a low-tech, two-barrel arrangement. This set-up manages the oxygen level while producing a very hot fire, creating the conditions needed to break down tightly-packed biomass into charcoal. Even with passing rain showers during the burn, it took about 40 minutes to transform hundreds of elderberry, willow, and assorted other sticks into readily usable biochar.
“Black gold” – biochar produced after a forty-minute burn. It’s remarkable to observe how much a large mass of material can break down so quickly!
Like agroforestry itself, biochar is an empowering example of small-scale solutions to global environmental problems. With 100% local materials and simple methods, farmers, gardeners, and land stewards can use woody surplus to generate a stable form of carbon, improving soils while reducing atmospheric CO2–a major greenhouse gas contributing to climate change.
While students walked away with ideas for producing their own biochar at home, our staff is looking forward to integrating biochar production into our regular rotation of land management. As we continue our agroforestry journey, it’s increasingly clear that we’ll have no shortage of stems and twigs to transform into biochar, offering another way to close loops and create a self-sufficient ecological farm.
But land stewardship is just the first part of the story. Through community classes and programs exploring topics like biochar, we’ll continue to empower folks from across our region with the skills to work with the land in restorative, resourceful, and mutually beneficial ways.
As one student shared after the program: “I’m grateful for opportunities like this to learn and grow, and I’m looking forward to seeing what other workshops will be offered in the future.“
An Ecological Gardener’s Story in Bringing Nature Home
Welcoming its fourth year in 2025, the Ecological Gardener Training Program with Waxwing EcoWorks brings together hands-on skill-building and in-depth exploration of our relationship with the natural world. Over 16 weekly classes, the program equips community members with the tools to design and nurture healthy habitat gardens while advocating for the wellbeing of our local ecosystems.
As we begin enrolling the next cohort of Ecological Gardener trainees, we checked in on one of our 2024 graduates, Susan, who is using what she learned in the program to transform her property near Lancaster, PA into an oasis for native biodiversity.
It’s a typical drive through the Lancaster countryside to get to Susan’s home outside of Strasburg. Little floating islands of rural suburbia wade in a sea of cropland and pasture. A tale of two landscapes unfolds out here: farmland and lawn. We might consider the tractor a keystone species in this human-made ecosystem.
But pulling up to Susan’s property, I’m caught by a change of scenery. I dock my vessel on a special island where the tractor is losing ground, literally.
A tawny carpet of leaf litter sweeps across the front slope where, just a month ago, turfgrass reigned supreme.
It’s the antithesis of seasonal lawn care. Rather than being diligently raked and hauled away, these leaves are here to stay: the foundation of fecundity; an ecosystem-in-progress.
Scenes from Susan’s front yard meadow-in-progress, less than a year since she began the Horn Farm’s Ecological Gardener Training Program with Waxwing EcoWorks.
In eco-gardening parlance, Susan’s steep, northwest-facing front lawn is inspired by sedge meadow ecology. Over 1700 plugs poke out of the leaf mulch like tacks on a corkboard, now setting roots for next spring’s growth. This community consists of four different species of sedges (Carex spp.) peppered with showier characters like red cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), eastern beebalm (Monarda bradburiana), hairy beardtongue (Penstemon hirsutus) and, fittingly, Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii). Such an arrangement was intentional for this highly visible space, balancing splendid variation and density with a garden-like presentation apropos for the public gaze.
Susan–who likes to go by Susie–tells me that the planting has already stirred curiosity from neighbors. She welcomes the conversations as a way to encourage folks to see our living spaces anew. “Native gardening promotes dialogue and encourages people to react in a different way,” she tells me later on, reflecting on how her experience in the Horn Farm’s Ecological Gardener Training Program expanded her perspective on the power of a small planted space. In this residential setting, she sees an opportunity to foster not just ecological health, but a revival of our relationship with nature: a pathway toward more positive, healing interaction with the land and each other.
Like many folks who find their way into the rabbit hole of ecological restoration, Susie has always been fond of natural spaces. An avid hiker and frequenter of local preserves, curiosity brought her to the Lancaster Conservancy’s Habitat Advocate Classes in 2023. These experiences helped transform her appreciation into conviction about the importance of reviving nature in ecologically bereft spaces (read: lawns).
Newly retired and ready to take action, she decided to enroll in the Horn Farm’s 2024 Ecological Gardener Training Program (EGTP). From February through May, 2024, weekly classes and field trips helped her move from tinkering with native plants at home to making intentional and informed design choices. When it came to the personal project that students undertake in the course, Susie’s focus was a shoe-in. She would set aside part of her yard to apply design tips and install a planting. In the ensuing months, the project would take off like any landscape spared of the tractor blade: blossoming exponentially.
And so here I was, admittedly baffled when Susie led me first to the backyard to start our property tour. As it turns out, her sedge meadow slope is only the latest iteration in a yard-wide vision launched by the EGTP. In fact, the slope is the product of hiring on the Waxwing EcoWorks team; the rest of the yard is her own enterprise. Around back we visit a 700 sq ft area bordering the property corner–her “original” project site–now covered likewise with a thick carpet of mulch.
Sheet mulching progress from beginning to end in Susie’s original project site. The work was completed by her and her husband (top two images provided by Susie).
With the enthusiasm of a composer explaining her score, Susie conveys to me how the EGTP gave her the rudiments she needed to make work like this more approachable and digestible–to take ownership over something that seemed like a landscaper’s specialty. “It feels much better than taking a shot in the dark” she tells me. In rhythm with the hands-on lessons covered by the course, Susie got to work at home: measuring out the space, calculating plug counts, sheet mulching (localizing the impact by sourcing wood chips from down the road), testing the soil, assessing land use history, and observing the area’s ecological indicators to whittle down a plant palette.
I’m enamored by her self-assurance and excitement as we study her designs: a preview of what’s to come. For Susie, a big plus of the EGTP was bringing the otherwise esoteric concept of “design,” down to earth. Many aspiring eco-gardeners are paralyzed before they begin, mired in questions about where to place plants, how to space them, how they’ll behave, and, of course, what on earth to put in the ground.
Through the EGTP, Susie figured out how to navigate the overwhelm of options, coming up with a design that integrates function, habitat value, and year-around enjoyment.
It was far from desk work. When we talk about bringing “design” down to earth, we mean it literally.
A crucial part of Susie’s process was visiting local preserves with similar qualities in the baseline landscape: glimpses of what her property, centuries ago, might have looked like. She borrowed inspiration from the Lancaster Conservancy’s Shiprock Woods Nature Preserve alongside native meadowlands managed historically by fire. Coupling these references with the current state of her space, which bears a legacy of agricultural use, she arrived at a point of clarity about what her mini-habitat would be best equipped to host, and maybe even aspire to.
Talking through Susie’s scaled design and plant pallete for her 700 sq ft yard conversion.
The resulting design is a thoughtful arrangement of 14 species. Different layers (from groundcovers to understory trees) allow her to maximize the square footage for biodiversity. Touchingly, the vision includes a seating space to enjoy the garden up close and personal–another echo of the training program’s teachings. In designing spaces for ecological health, we’re not just setting aside parcels of nature: we’re allowing ourselves to be part of the healing. We’re not ecological islands, after all.
Diverse Refugia, all at Home
Sheet mulching extends down the yard from the original project site as Susie and her husband catch the restoration bug! (images provided by Susie)
Any ecological gardener will tell you that sheet-mulching a lawnscape is enormously satisfying. Susie is no exception; in fact, with extra mulch and cardboard to spare, the process became infectious. What began as a relatively isolated project to mend a corner patch of her yard has now threaded its way into a quilt of activities across the property, including a natural border along the property line, re-designed landscaping around the back patio, and, of course, the whole front yard with her new friends at Waxwing.
One can venture to guess that 30-40% of the landscape is now set aside for ecological gardening bliss.
A corridor of planting area connects Susie’s original project to her front yard meadow. Samplings of plants line the way, including American black elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), red chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia), and little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium)
As we survey these other works-in-progress, Susie shares with me another lesson gleaned from the EGTP. Even a modest-sized property like hers has its fair share of microhabitats. Little patches of yard here and there might have subtle differences in hydrology, soil drainage, shade, contour, and direction–all ecological “foundations” that suggest the suite of plants best suited for one area versus another. Inspired by the EGTP’s field trips to local reference landscapes, Susie took notice of the surprising variations that span her home turf. She closely observed existing conditions and found parallels within local habitats and plant communities. Rather than imposing her whimsy on the land, she has relied on the land’s wisdom to guide decisions.
There are many pathways for restoring a piece of earth, but when we build relationships with landscapes around us and listen, we’ll find that we’re not alone as restoration designers.
And so, in just a few steps, we move from a planned patch of shade-tolerant shrubs to a “hot and dry” exposed strip warranting meadow species. The area around the patio stacks even more functions, with a plan to install clumping grasses, buttonbushes (Cephalanthus occidentalis), and arrowwood viburnums (Viburnum dentatum) that can provide a natural buffer from runoff while dispersing water flows to other areas of the property. Wrapping up our stroll at the sedge-meadow hillside where we began, I can’t help but think of what this will look like in just a few year’s time. Take a sizable hike through multiple ecological communities, and condense it to a few paces around a house. A spot of refuge for a whole region, in a time when nature needs all the refuge it can get.
For all the savory nuances of design, reference landscapes, and plants, the lesson here is simple:
Plants are valuable allies for the shared well being of ourselves and the natural spaces we depend on, even in the smallest patch of land.
Like a heap of scraps becoming compost, just another area of turfgrass in tractor heaven is being deliberately turned over to the benefit of all life. As Susie puts it to me, the Ecological Gardener Training Program helped her see the potential of “taking small spaces and making them better for the world.”
Susie waters her front yard sedge meadow after site prep and planting are completed with the help of Waxwing EcoWorks (image provided by Susie).
The Joy in the Little Worlds
The EGTP is an incredible resource for practical insight. But for most trainees, Susie included, it also inspires introspection. She now sees ecological gardening as more than just a means to a regenerative end. She sees it as a process: an unfolding interaction between humans and the nature of which we’re a part–a rediscovery of our place in the landscape, rather than above it. She is motivated by the notion of reparation: of paying back for our extractive relationship with the land. Overall, she sees ecological gardening as an act of love: an invitation to work with the land rather than against it.
She recalls to me the transformation that emerged in her as the class progressed, inspired by the attention to detail that came with observing plants on the landscape:
“I learned how to see plants in a different way. All of a sudden, I was seeing all the things I didn’t know I didn’t know.”
She jokingly shares with me how she can no longer take a casual stroll through meadow or forest, always pulled to the trail’s edge by another fascinating seed head; a pairing of plants; the finer elegance of those common species often overlooked in their ubiquity: of mayapples, Virginia waterleaf, and meadow grasses. Seeing all of this beauty in the seemingly mundane underlines her commitment to bring nature home, and she feels this is a deeper gift of the program–that invitation to deep noticing, which may be just as healing to people as the action we take to restore the land.
I stop to take a picture of Susie posing in front of her sedge meadow slope. Below to my left, I catch a glimpse of something peculiar in the basal green of a wild violet (a volunteer, but welcome in a place like this). We peer in to sight a red caterpillar circled with black studs like cactus needles. Susie gasps with exhilaration, and in that moment I can hear the truth of the love she’s told me about. “That’s a fritillary!” she exclaims. A variegated fritillary (Euptoieta claudia) like this has piqued her interest before; she spotted one while going about her eco-gardening routines some time ago, and it spurred her into a flurry of research. She’s always interested in learning more about who she’s building habitat for.
Just a few short steps from the road, a variegated fritillary caterpillar (Euptoieta claudia) happily munches away in Susie’s front yard meadow planting.
“I’ve already seen, even at the beginning, more happy critters here than I’ve seen before.”
That’s a promising foretelling for an island of biodiversity that’s only just starting to bloom. And with the help of the Ecological Gardener Training Program, more and more folks across the region are planting refuges like this, and not just independent homeowners like Susie. Ecological landscaping professionals, community doers, teachers, and advocates are popping up like plugs in leaf mulch, all inspired to turn the tide and re-balance our relationship with the wild spaces we depend on.
It’s only a matter of time before little islands like Susie’s merge into a continent.
Registrations close on Monday, January 27th at 12PM EST.
Over 16 weeks of hands-on learning with our educational partner Waxwing EcoWorks, trainees dig deep into designing and nurturing native plant habitat to help build back biodiversity in the places we live, work, and play. Learn more and let us know you’re interested at hornfarmcenter.org/ecological-gardener-training/
Scholarships are available to offset program costs.
Trainees in the 2024 Ecological Gardener Training Program. Image courtesy of Elyse Jurgen (Waxwing EcoWorks)
About the Author: Andrew Leahy
Growing up in the foothills of Ricketts Glen State Park, Andrew spent his early life in the embrace of Northeastern PA forests, sowing the seeds for his ongoing enchantment with the natural world and its stewardship. While studying English and Music Composition at Muhlenberg College, he gravitated toward nonprofit engagement as a work study student in the college’s Office of Community Engagement. Now, going on three years at the Horn Farm Center, Andrew manages social media, develops and teaches educational programs, coordinates volunteer events, and collaborates on marketing projects, large events, and organizational capacity-building. Through all of this, he is a dedicated student of the land, with a life’s mission of learning (and providing spaces for others to learn) about bioregional ecology, regenerative agriculture, permaculture, foraging, and locally-focused ways of living in reciprocal relationship with nature. Andrew has completed the Horn Farm’s Land Steward Training Program (2023), Ecological Gardener Training Program (2024), and teaches monthly foraging walks, alongside co-teaching the Horn Farm’s new Forager Training Program.
Each year, the Horn Farm Center hosts a popular festival for a strange and fleeting native fruit–“America’s forgotten” pawpaw. The Pawpaw Festival is just one of the many ways we connect people with the natural landscape.
Ever tasted, or even heard of, a pawpaw?
This unusual native fruit–a northern outlier of an otherwise tropical fruit family–grows in abundance across forests and hillsides in the Lower Susquehanna Riverlands. With a shelf life that lasts in the blink of an eye, pawpaws are a tantalizing treat of the late summer for locals and visitors alike, which is why the York County Pawpaw Festival, celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2024, is now a 4-day extravaganza highlighting all the “Wild & Uncommon” offerings of our vibrant landscape.
Pawpaw fruit from the Horn Farm Center’s pawpaw orchard, which grows over 20 cultivated varieties. The vast majority of pawpaws occur in wild habitats–forested river hills and valley bottoms–across the Lower Susquehanna Region.
Bringing together unique local foods, native plants, nature-based education, and the iconic pawpaw that started it all, the 2024 Wild & Uncommon Weekend will take place from September 26th to 29th. At the center of these festivities, the Horn Farm Center is hosting the annual Pawpaw Festival on September 28th from 9am to 5pm. Pre-purchased tickets are required to attend.
This popular event is often the first thing that comes to mind for locals who’ve heard of the Horn Farm Center. For many curious visitors, too, the Horn Farm is a one-day nexus for sampling the alluring pawpaw. In fact, many festival-goers over the years hail from New England, the Midwest, Florida and Georgia, and even as far as Canada, all drawn to the region by this peculiar fruit! The event features pawpaws for sale alongside local environmental organizations, native plant nurseries, nature-focused activities, and regional food vendors, many offering special pawpaw-inspired goodies!
Vendors and patrons at the 2023 Pawpaw Festival.Volunteer selling fresh pawpaw fruit (2023).Locally Seasoned, who will be offering a special pawpaw cooking class as part of the 2024 Wild & Uncommon Weekend.Orchard manager Dick Bono providing a tour of the pawpaw orchard (2022).
But unlike the pawpaw, with its seasonal limits and notoriously fleeting shelf life, the Horn Farm Center offers an abundance of learning opportunities all year around. If you’re planning to join the fun for the Horn Farm’s 2024 Wild & Uncommon Weekend, it’s worth getting to know a bit more about the small, resilient, and locally-rooted nonprofit behind this big event!
Connecting People with the Land
The Horn Farm Center’s mission is to foster ecological learning through land stewardship, community partnership, and hands-on experiences. Established as a nonprofit in 2004 after locals came together to halt development on historic farmland, the 186 acres that make up the Horn Farm Center are forever protected under the York County Farm and Natural Lands Trust. This preserves over 250 years of agricultural and natural heritage; moreover, it provides a space for visitors from York County and beyond to grow in connection with the local landscape.
Educational & Transformational
The Horn Farm Center cultivates that connection in many ways. Classes held throughout the year help people explore diverse pathways for deepening their relationship with the natural world. Popular examples include foraging walks, composting workshops, rustic cooking and fermentation classes, and multi-week training programs on topics like regenerative land stewardship, ecological gardening, foraging, and sustainable beekeeping. Next to the Center’s historic farmhouse and summer kitchen, dozens of community garden plots quilt the land, providing a valuable resource for local green thumbs to grow food for family and neighbors.
Foraging ClassesKitchen ClassesEco Gardener Training Program
Innovative & Inspiring
Across the wider landscape, the Horn Farm demonstrates innovative approaches to restoration and agriculture. Plots supporting local farm businesses rub shoulders with active restoration areas promoting biodiversity and ecological health. Prolific rows of elderberry, American hazelnut, willows, and other perennial crops provide food, medicine, and materials while also bolstering stream health along the farm’s margins. Many of these spaces have been planted and continue to be tended with the support of volunteers.
Some areas are even intentionally progressing toward total wildness. As part of restoration efforts in over 16 acres of riparian (streamside) zones, the Horn Farm has planted dozens of high-density, biodiverse “mini-forests.” These Miyawaki forests, named after the Japanese botanist who pioneered them, are the first plantings of their kind on the east coast!
Volunteers helping to restore a riparian buffer by planting a Miyawaki “mini-forest” with native trees and shrubs.Volunteers harvesting ripe elderberries from the Horn Farm’s regenerative farmscape.A mature Miyawaki “mini-forest” planted in 2018
The common thread across the Horn Farm’s agricultural and natural spaces is one of unity: bringing together what are often considered divergent approaches to land management. The Center demonstrates how farming and health ecology can work in harmony to promote the long-term wellbeing of people and place.
Thinking Like an Ecosystem: Ways to Grow Connected
So, while the Wild & Uncommon Pawpaw Festival brought over 2000 visitors to the farm in recent years, the Horn Farm is always a busy ecosystem–buzzing with class participants, pollinators, tour groups, volunteers, beneficial soil microbes, community gardeners, migratory birds, patrons of local businesses, and all the members of our regional ecological food webs.
Everyone is connected by a love for working with and learning from the earth: an essential part of growing greater ecological and community wellbeing.
Volunteers creating “brushwood bundles” of harvested willow during the Horn Farm’s Winter Willow Workdays.
Interested in exploring the many ways you can join the Horn Farm ecosystem? Consider registering for a class, volunteering, donating, or scheduling a tour with your school or community group. And of course, don’t forget to save the date for the York County Pawpaw Festival and Wild & Uncommon Weekend, happening September 26-29, 2024.
Growing up in the foothills of Ricketts Glen State Park, Andrew spent his early life in the embrace of Northeastern PA forests, sowing the seeds for his ongoing enchantment with the natural world and its stewardship.
While studying English Literature and Music Composition at Muhlenberg College, he gravitated toward nonprofit engagement as a work study student. Now, at the Horn Farm Center, Andrew develops and leads educational programs, coordinates volunteer events, manages social media, and collaborates on marketing projects, large events, and organizational capacity-building. Through all of this, he is a dedicated student of the land, with a life’s mission of learning (and providing spaces for others to learn) about bioregional ecology, regenerative agriculture, ethical foraging, ethnobotany, and locally-focused ways of living in reciprocal relationship with nature.
Outside of the Horn Farm Center, Andrew enjoys spending his time hiking the trails of York and Lancaster Counties, going for bike rides, cooking nourishing local (and oftentimes foraged!) meals, reading, journaling, and frequenting York County gems like Leg Up Farmers Market, Refillism, and York Central Market.
