Part 2: Downstream

Read For the Whole Stream Part 1: Upstream here.

For the Whole Stream is the first installment of a new series called the Horn Farm Ecosystem. Through monthly articles, we’ll walk the land in writing: visiting the forests, regenerative fields, and ecological action sites of the Horn Farm Center to explain our stewardship work, uplift nature, and inspire love for the land. To learn more about the Horn Farm Ecosystem blog series, check out our February 17th, 2023 newsletter.

Like a drop of water in a stream, ecology ripples outward.

Actions taken (or neglected) in one place have resounding impacts elsewhere over time. Non-native introductions that did not start at the Horn Farm Center have given us the likes, tests, and uses (note the paradox) of multiflora rose, Japanese honeysuckle, garlic mustard, Japanese stiltgrass, and tree of heaven. Each of these plants–without a native niche or co-evolutionary partnership to balance its influence–was once a newcomer here in some seemingly innocuous form. And now, they’ve all reshaped the ecology of our landscape, in many ways monopolizing our land tending energies. Once a drop, now pervasive, plucked from a place beyond the scope of what we can see.

The same story of compounding impacts unfolds for beneficial engagement with the land. Replanting natives where non-natives have been removed reverberates outward to support the species they host, the plants those species pollinate, and the food chains they underpin. Stopping the cycle of tilling soils in farming bolsters soil stability, improves water infiltration, replenishes soil nutrients and microbiology, enhances crop vitality, and contributes to carbon drawdown from the atmosphere, not to mention the benefits of reduced stormwater runoff on neighboring waterways and habitats. Over time, one lever releases many, and the catalyst of change can begin small. The humble backyard, the wayward farm, the thin edge of a streamside … if you haven’t already taken Douglas Tallamy’s hint about bringing habitat home here, this is your cue. As we work to rebuild ecological balance in one place, that act of recovery may well be exported along the world’s energy flows–carried by the wind, water, seeds, scat, and human messaging. Our riparian buffer, of course, is no exception.

How exactly? As noted in Part 1 of this blog set, our eroded stream deposits into Kreutz Creek, which flows into the Susquehanna River. Kreutz Creek is one vein among thousands tethered to a crucial ecological artery. The Susquehanna River meanders 444 miles south from its headwaters in central New York, carving down Pennsylvania before cutting briefly into Maryland and emptying into the Chesapeake Bay. Given its size and might, the Susquehanna River is one of the primary water channels of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

In fact, nearly half of the freshwater flow into the Chesapeake comes from the Susquehanna River, making it the largest water contributor to the bay. This means that Pennsylvanians, not one of us in viewing distance of the Bay, have a surprisingly crucial role to play in addressing the degradation of downstream ecologies in the Chesapeake.

As the environmental pressures of development and agriculture continue across the watershed, the Chesapeake Bay has become a collecting ground for chemical and nutrient pollution, excess sediments, and other waste carried away by the exposed waterways that feed it.

Indeed, it’s estimated that 65% of the nitrogen and phosphorous polluting the Chesapeake have come from Pennsylvania.

Carried by stormwater runoff, most of this pollution originates from bufferless, steam-adjacent farms that rely on nutrient inputs to feed large-scale crop production on ailing soils (manure is a part of this problem as well). Nutrient pollution at this scale, alongside sedimentation, has spelled existential trouble for the Chesapeake over time. Biodiversity has suffered with seagrasses, shellfish, and fish succumbing to depleted oxygen levels in the water, caused by both over-sedimentation and unchecked algae blooms fueled by nutrient pollution. (Note: algal blooms can cause direct harm beyond aquatic life, potentially harboring toxins that threaten human health). Loss of biodiversity to this degree, echoing the stream habitats in our backyards, has implications that ripple out: destabilizing food chains, upsetting local economies, and undercutting the Bay’s resilience as a storm buffer against increasingly powerful weather.

Since the EPA’s heightened attention to the Bay in 2010, PA farmers and property owners have responded increasingly to statewide calls (and incentives) for waterway protection using riparian buffers. The state fell short of conservation targets in 2017 and recommitted through robust riparian programs emphasizing agroforestry in buffer design–an angle taken up at the Horn Farm Center (more to come on that!).

Between this growing movement, increasingly common torrential rains, and a keen interest in ecological land stewardship, the Horn Farm Center broke ground on our first riparian buffer planting in 2018.

As the planting and learning continues, we’ve come to see the riparian buffer not just as an enactment of our responsibility to ailing lands and waters around us, but as a teaching tool–a window perhaps–into how ecology works. That is: how ecology teaches us that small changes can bring about resonant impacts, and to recognize that our proactivity (or neglect) in one area determines outcomes for areas and systems even beyond our scope. For every upstream, there is an innumerable family of downstreams.

As beneficiaries of the soils, lands, and waters nourished by the Susquehanna, the Chesapeake, and the generations that tended this landscape before dominant culture abandoned the caretaker lifeway, it’s only right for us to lean back, reacquaint ourselves with the ground, and work to bring back balance in whatever capacity we can. Because when we nurture and bolster an ecosystem at home, we hold the key to rebalancing it elsewhere, and restoring humility to ourselves in the process.

Click here to read For the Whole Stream Part 3: Beyond the Stream

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, at the Horn Farm Center, Andrew manages social media, develops 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.

Part 1: Upstream

This blog is the first installment of a new series called the Horn Farm Ecosystem. Through monthly articles, we’ll walk the land in writing: visiting the forests, regenerative fields, and ecological action sites of the Horn Farm Center to explain our stewardship work, uplift nature, and inspire love for the land. To learn more about the Horn Farm Ecosystem blog series, check out our February 17th, 2023 newsletter.

Whether you’re gathering for a class at our corn barn or whooshing by on Rt. 30, there’s a site at the Horn Farm Center that can’t be missed. Look east of the farmhouse, beyond the community garden plots, and you’ll see an expanse of tree tubes covering nearly 8 acres of land formerly dedicated to annual monocropping. Dotting the landscape, a twiggy menagerie: thousands of saplings planted between 2020 and this past summer eagerly waiting to outgrow their enclosures and bring large vegetation back to the land. In a time frame that seems tedious to us but a snap for nature, the likes of American hazelnut, sycamore, black and sandbar willow, various dogwoods, and more will cover this swath: a new forest born out of a willful overtaking. We’ve convened hundreds of community groups and volunteers over three years to facilitate this afforestation–or creation of a forest where there wasn’t one before–committing hundreds of hours and thousands of trees to just a fraction of our 186 acres, but why?

It’s of little contention that diverse trees (in tree-favoring environments) are a good thing, especially in a bioregion like ours, which now contends with a centuries-long legacy of agricultural clear-cutting alongside concerning air quality compared to the rest of the state. But there’s more to the story of the 15,000+ trees that have taken residence in our soils since we turned our attention to riparian health.

Venture out to the spot mentioned above and you’ll notice that the tree tube procession parallels a deep trench carving its way down the hillside. This is a human-made seasonal stream corridor, originally dug to drain water from bordering croplands. The eroded cut deposits into a natural creek—Kreutz Creek for York County readers—which then meanders east before emptying, like so many of our regional waterways, into the Susquehanna River. This downstream connection is the primary impetus for our undertaking. What we’re building is a riparian buffer.

What is a riparian buffer?

Picture: a lush array of grasses, shrubs, and trees snaking along both sides of a freshwater stream. This is a riparian buffer. The word “riparian,” from the Latin “streamside,” describes the area’s natural character: a transitional zone between the land and the waters of a river, lake, or stream, sometimes taking the shape of a wetland. “Buffer” designates the riparian area’s function in absorbing the impacts of adjacent land uses on the water. Across PA, riparian buffers have grown increasingly popular (and imperative) in agricultural fields, yards, commercial sites, and along roadsides: any place where the proximity of human activities to critical waterways is apparent and felt. Each riparian planting provides a host of benefits for water quality, soil health, and the surrounding ecology.

Simply put, the presence of trees, shrubs, and other vegetation along a waterway provides natural protection for the water and the life it carries.

Riparian buffers act like safety nets for streams, rivers, and lakes. Networks of tree roots help to keep soils in place, mimicking the porous earth of forests. Forested waterways are also better equipped to intercept sediment pollution, filter contaminants, and slow runoff that causes streambank erosion, all while providing favorable forage and habitat for birds, bats, insects, and aquatic life. Indeed, in the absence of riparian buffers, waterways become degraded. Impacts upstream quickly move downstream. Below are just a few of the ecological problems of exposed waterways:

• Sedimentation: without vegetation to stop the runoff of solid particles and minerals, excess sediments enter the water and accumulate at the bottom, depleting aquatic oxygen levels and suffocating wildlife. 
• Algal blooms: “nutrient pollution” from excess nitrogen and phosphorus leaching off croplands promotes a runaway “bloom” of algae on the water surface. This overabundance of algae depletes oxygen levels and blocks critical sunlight from reaching the stream floor. Nutrient leaching, especially of nitrogen, is a common side-effect of intensive agriculture that relies on industrial fertilizers. 
• Streambank erosion: rapid runoff and unstable soils expedite the otherwise natural process of erosion along the stream edge, creating inhospitable conditions for fish and macroinvertebrates (aquatic insects) that depend on intact edges to spawn. This leads to population declines that can ripple up the food chain.
• Temperature: without tree cover in the summer, unshaded waters overheat, making them uninhabitable for aquatic organisms. This is becoming increasingly common as our climate changes. 
• Food availability: fish and aquatic insects require leaf litter that accumulates in the fall and winter to weather the cold seasons. Missing vegetation around the stream results in a lack of these vital nutrient sources, again destabilizing the base of the food chain. 
• Carbon sequestration: trees and grasses are essential for balancing atmospheric carbon dioxide and absorbing the excess of greenhouse gasses emitted by human activities like the burning of fossil fuels. Simply put, missing vegetation is another missed opportunity to work proactively against climate change. 
• Human value: Unstable streambanks, eroded soils, and a lack of biodiversity negatively affect our mental health and sense of belonging in the landscape.

While our regenerative farming approach does not apply chemical inputs like herbicides or synthetic fertilizers to the ground, we still see the impacts of a vacant landscape along our stream: drastic erosion, sediment deposits, and fast-moving water that, in 2021, partially flooded our riparian plantings.

Many locals will remember, as well, the destructive flash flooding of 2018 that affected much of York County, which was a major push for the Horn Farm Center’s turn to watershed health as an essential companion to healthy agriculture. Lastly, with runoff controlled by the return of a root web to the land, the farm will benefit from greater infiltration to better recharge our groundwater supply for community gardeners and other uses. Water security on the farm is becoming increasingly unpredictable as we endure drier, hotter summers each year. 

Ultimately, the newly planted 8 acre riparian buffer, which will grow to 10 acres this spring, will have an incredible impact on the farm and the ecosystem we’re a part of–from wildlife habitat to water security.

And like a drop of water in a stream, ecology ripples outwards. This is one of nature’s many teachings: how healthy elements positively affect relationships beyond the scope of what we can see. With this reality, our regenerative landscape is not just for us and our other-than-human neighbors, but for the health of waters, ecologies, and generations downstream.

Click here to read For the Whole Stream Part 2: Downstream

Click here to read For the Whole Stream Part 3: Beyond the Stream

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, at the Horn Farm Center, Andrew manages social media, develops 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.