Horn Farm Center for Agricultural Education

Happenings

Horn Farm Happenings – August 9, 2024

York Pawpaw Festival: September 28th

Tickets are now live for the 20th Annual York County Pawpaw Festival, held on Saturday, September 28th, 9am-5pm at the Horn Farm Center!

You’ll notice a few new ticket features this year, including Premium Early Entry and options for parking on-site or off-site. Each ticket also includes an “arrival window” to help smooth out traffic flows.

Pre-purchased tickets are REQUIRED to attend the Festival. There will be no day-of sales at the door!  For more information about tickets and festival logistics, check out our Frequently Asked Questions.

Grab your tickets today for the signature event of Horn Farm Center’s new Wild & Uncommon Weekend!

Want to attend the festival for FREE? Consider volunteering during the event.

Wild & Uncommon Weekend Guide

The York County Pawpaw Festival is now the signature event of Wild & Uncommon Weekend, a region-wide celebration featuring new events and local offerings, many highlighting their own pawpaw twists!

Make the most of your Festival weekend by checking out our partner events taking place across the Lower Susquehanna Riverlands from September 26-29, 2024!

Explore a new array of tastes, tours, and learning experiences, all a part of the Horn Farm’s expanded Wild & Uncommon Weekend.

How About Sunday Brunch? 

Kick-off the last day of Wild & Uncommon Weekend with a delicious boxed brunch curated by Locally Seasoned while overlooking the iconic Susquehanna riverfront in Columbia, PA. Enjoy a locally-crafted meal and self-serve beverage station (all featuring pawpaw) while learning about the origins, ecological significance, and future of America’s forgotten fruit!

The presentation will be led by Dale Hendricks, PA pawpaw grower and agroforestry, permaculture, biochar, and soil advocate. Dale will explore the history, culture, and lore of the pawpaw fruit. Learn about establishing other productive perennial crops like honey locust, persimmon, mulberry and more while building an excitingly diverse farm landscape that is water friendly, carbon negative, and presents a hopeful vision for the future.

Did we mention the brunch? Check out the menu and other offerings that will be held at Susquehanna National Heritage Area’s Columbia Crossing River Trail Center on Sunday, September 29th in partnership with the Horn Farm Center!

Click here to Purchase Tickets

Supporting Our Mission, Work, & Festival

Klinge’s mission is to improve the lives of people all over the globe through innovative and ultra-reliable supply chain solutions for critical chemicals, essential foodstuffs, and life-changing medicines. Klinge is also supporting Horn Farm Center’s land-healing mission by providing parking at Church of the Open Door for the York County Pawpaw Festival! Klinge’s customized designs include but are not limited to dual redundant systems, tank container heating and cooling equipment, pharmaceutical temperature control, military-specification refrigeration, explosion-proof refrigeration and heating, quick-thawing systems for meat processing, and equipment reaching temperatures down to -70°C (-94°F). Klinge’s skilled technical team and worldwide service network assist in making sure customer products can be supported around the globe.

We thank Klinge for supporting the Horn Farm Center and for helping to make the 2024 Pawpaw Festival a fun, safe, and accessible outdoor event in York County!

2025 Ecological Gardener Training

Through immersions like our Land Steward and Ecological Gardener Training programs, our community has contributed to the revival and rewilding of different ecological “pockets” across our landscape.Check out the late summer show from our recent plantings, designed and installed by Ecological Gardener Training Program students thanks to our incredible partner, Waxwing EcoWorks Co.

Interested in learning how to design, build, and steward native plant habitat in your own home and community? Be the first to know when the 2025 registrations go live by filling out the interest from linked below.

Click here to Sign the Interest Form

Horn Farm Happenings – July 26, 2024

Building & Baking…

You can say we’ve been “buzzing” at the Horn Farm Center this summer with an eclectic mix of classes on the land, in the kitchen, and in the workshop.

Earlier this month, an eager group of curious learners took part in our first Intro to Carpentry immersion, developing their skills with using power tools by collectively building a fully-functional chicken coop for Ten Mile Mushrooms in Danville. The class combined interpreting plans with custom fabrication, giving folks a practical glimpse into the process, challenges, and troubleshoots of assembling structures from raw materials.

“I learned so much in this class. The instruction was fantastic. I gained a lot of confidence to work on projects I have in mind at home.” — Karen, Intro to Carpentry attendee

Down the hill, a rainbow of fresh, local produce painted our Summer Kitchen with the colors of summer. Folks in our Four-Course Summer Meal class learned how to transform these healthy ingredients into creative and delicious meals, all incorporating rice paper! Ever heard of rice paper pierogi? How about rice paper fruit fritters?

Crafty spins on seasonal staples help us make the most of local ingredients, and many of our upcoming Summer Kitchen Programs, like Crafting Fruit Vinegars and Fermenting Garden Vegetables, will follow this thread into the late summer!

…Bees & Berries…Bandages & Balm!

Of course, it wouldn’t be a weekend at the Horn Farm Center without classes on the landscape as well. From Foraging First Aid with the Northern Appalachia School to a new program celebrating the medicinal and ecological power of elderberry, we explored ways to foster deeper relationship with the plants that grow among us.

Across all of our classes this month, folks took home not just practical knowledge, but deeper insight into the ways we can appreciate local abundance: nourishing food, wild medicine, and re-sourced materials. Greater wellbeing for the land and ourselves, after all, begins with what we can find rooted right here at home!

Click here for More Information on Upcoming Classes

20th Annual Pawpaw Festival: Tickets on Sale August 1st

2024 is the 20th anniversary of the York County Pawpaw Festival, now a part of the Horn Farm Center’s new Wild & Uncommon Weekend.Wild & Uncommon Weekend will include events, tastings, tours, and educational activities taking place across the region between September 27th-29th, all celebrating the diverse ecosystem of local foods, makers, and experiences that make York County and the Susquehanna Riverlands so special–including the native pawpaw fruit!

The Pawpaw Festival at the Horn Farm Center–the centerpiece of Wild & Uncommon Weekend–will take place on Saturday, September 28th from 9am to 5pm. In addition to sales of pawpaw fruit and other unique seasonal foods, the event will feature local vendors, food trucks, plant nurseries, and educational activities at the Horn Farm Center.

Tickets for the 20th Annual Pawpaw Festival at Horn Farm Center will be available to purchase online only starting on Thursday, August 1st at 12PM! 

Learn More About Pawpaw Fest

Supporting Our Mission & Work

A long-time supporter of the Horn Farm Center’s regenerative mission, 7group continues to uplift our work in so many ways. We’re grateful to call 7group another one of our annual sponsors!7group began more than 20 years ago to help to change how American builders, designers, architects, and owners understood the built environment as sustainable. When they worked on creating the U.S. Green Building Council LEED certification program, they knew that it was the first step towards true sustainability, but not the last.

Together with their clients and colleagues, 7group has been imagining a different way to understand how humans, their built environment, and the natural world around us all live and breathe with each other. Across the US and the world, they engage built-environment projects that advance how technical innovation and community vitality entangle and co-evolve.

Join the Community Crew!

Don’t forget, our NEW TRAINING DAY for the Community Crew is right around the corner on August 11th! The Horn Farm Community Crew a dedicated volunteer program launched in 2023 that provides specialized training, service-learning workdays, and perks for returning volunteers!

Attend the upcoming Community Crew Training Day on Sunday, August 11th from 10am to 3pm to partake in land stewardship while getting oriented to the Horn Farm’s mission and projects. You’ll also see how we’re expanding our volunteer ecosystem in 2024, offering more ways to engage with the land and nourish our educational mission!

Click here for more information. 

WE ARE HIRING: We are seeking a creative, motivated full-time Farm & Agroforestry Manager to join our talented team of land stewards and educators to innovate on-farm learning experiences and lead cutting-edge regenerative farming projects.

The Farm & Agroforestry Manager will have the opportunity to collaboratively design and lead a new demonstration forest garden project, reshaping the way our community thinks about agriculture and helping to achieve Horn Farm Center’s strategic vision.

Interested in learning more? Check out the full position details linked below. To apply send a resume and letter of interest to Executive Director, Alexis Campbell at executivedirector@hornfarmcenter.org by July 24, 2024.

Horn Farm Happenings – July 12, 2024

Learn & Grow Together in Service

Since our founding,  volunteers have made an incredible impact at the Horn Farm Center. From planting thousands of trees to supporting our annual events, we couldn’t do it all without the generosity and commitment of our caring and eager community.

That’s why we’re excited to share a NEW TRAINING DAY for the Horn Farm Community Crew–a dedicated volunteer program launched in 2023 that provides specialized training, service-learning workdays, and perks for returning volunteers!

Attend our Community Crew Training Day on Sunday, August 11th from 10am to 3pm to partake in land stewardship while getting oriented to the Horn Farm’s mission and projects. You’ll also see how we’re expanding our volunteer ecosystem in 2024, offering more ways to engage with the land and nourish our educational mission!

Click here for More Information

All the Buzz on the Farm

This week, members of our Beekeeper Training Program monitored Horn Farm’s apiaries and explored how to keep the honeybees healthy and pest-free at this particularly taxing time of year.

With the soaring temperatures, they arrived to see hundreds of bees performing a hive-regulation maneuver called “bearding.” To keep internal temperatures at the optimum level, bees converge on the outside of the hive and flutter their wings in unison, sending cooler air to the chambers within. As the course instructor Mark Gingrich says, “It’s a bee’s version of sitting on the front porch on a hot summer day.”

All told, the honeybees are managing well, and soon our backyard beekeepers-in-training will be establishing their own broods for tending at home!

Elderberry: From Harvest to Syrup

Elderberry, Elder-Mother, Tree of Music: steeped in lore and reverence, this healing plant has fascinated and nourished people for centuries.Today, many are familiar with elderberry’s immune-boosting properties; elderberry syrup is a staple among herbal remedies. But have you ever worked closely with elderberry to craft your own?

On Saturday, July 20 from 9AM-1PM, we’re hosting a special foraging program celebrating the medicinal powerhouse of elderberry. Join us for Elderberry: From Harvest to Syrup, where we’ll dig into the history, ecology, identification, and medicinal preparation of Sambucus canadensis.

Looking for more ways to explore this healthful plant? Join us for two Elderberry Harvest Volunteer Days coming up in August!

Click here to Register

Celebrate & Volunteer!

As you plan your Wild & Uncommon Weekend experience, consider lending a hand!  We’re seeking plenty of volunteers for the 20th annual Pawpaw Festival at the Horn Farm Center–the signature event of our NEW Wild & Uncommon Weekend.Sign up for a volunteer shift on Saturday, September 28th!

Areas of volunteer need include admissions, pawpaw sales, parking, and anywhere that involves engaging and supporting visitors. As a volunteer, you’ll enjoy free admission to the Pawpaw Festival, a free lunch, and priority access to purchase pawpaws.

Help us make our largest annual event a success by joining the fun as a volunteer! And don’t forget to check out ALL the unique local offerings happening over our debut Wild & Uncommon Weekend, September 26-29, 2024!

Click here to Volunteer

Learn Practical Earth-Skills with Northern Appalachia School at Horn Farm 

This Sunday, July 14th at the Horn Farm Center, our friends from the Northern Appalachia School are offering back-to-back skill-building classes celebrating the incredible gifts of our local plant allies.

From 9:00AM-12:00PM, educator Jaybird Tignor will be leading Making Natural Cordage, a hands-on exploration of simple cord-rendering using wild-harvested, fibrous plant material. Jaybird is a PA Master Naturalist, Certified Permaculture Designer, Certified Wildlife Tracker, Wilderness First Responder, ecological steward, and craftsman.

From 12:30PM-3:00PM, Jaybird and partner educator Calyx Liddick will lead Foraging First Aid, a unique look at foraging plants for first-aid situations. Calyx is a certified clinical herbalist and nutritionist, field botanist, wildcrafter, activist, writer, and mother of two.

Join us this Sunday, July 14th at the Horn Farm Center to explore the age-old ways humans have used–and continue to use–the plants around us to meet our needs. In addition to developing skills and tapping into ancestral knowledge, participants will learn about local ecology, ethical harvesting, and the healing work of building relationship with plants.

WE ARE HIRING: We are seeking a creative, motivated full-time Farm & Agroforestry Manager to join our talented team of land stewards and educators to innovate on-farm learning experiences and lead cutting-edge regenerative farming projects.

The Farm & Agroforestry Manager will have the opportunity to collaboratively design and lead a new demonstration forest garden project, reshaping the way our community thinks about agriculture and helping to achieve Horn Farm Center’s strategic vision.

Interested in learning more? Check out the full position details linked below. To apply send a resume and letter of interest to Executive Director, Alexis Campbell at executivedirector@hornfarmcenter.org by July 24, 2024.