Classes & Workshops

We believe in the power of education.

The Horn Farm Center offers a wide variety of classes and workshops that celebrate all the ways we can foster love and care for the earth in the places we call home. By teaching holistic skills rooted in nature, we are building a community of empowered land stewards.

Classes at the Horn Farm Center are taught by in-house staff as well as regional guest instructors. We thank our partner organizations and guest instructors for sharing their expertise and unique perspectives with the Horn Farm community.

If you are interested in teaching classes at the Horn Farm Center, you can fill out our New Instructor Interest Form. Reach us with any questions at education@hornfarmcenter.org.

For inquiries about private tours and custom classes, visit our Group Visits and Tours webpage.


As one way to celebrate our 20th Anniversary, the Horn Farm Center is offering special programs that harken back to a popular event remembered by many in our community.

Between 2013 and 2016, Homesteading Education Day was an annual community gathering where visitors participated in demonstrations, talks, and workshops focused on common and forgotten homesteading skills, like cottage gardening, growing fiber and dye plants, food preservation, homemade soap, candles, cheeses, and more. 

Instead of recreating one day of activities, we are paying homage to Homesteading Education Day by offering homesteading-themed topics throughout 2024. Check out our Homesteading Education Day “throwback” classes below, and stay tuned for new classes throughout the year! 

2024 Homesteading Series:

Stay tuned for new classes posting throughout the year.

Intro to Power Tools – March 30, 2024

Fermenting Kimchi – March 30, 2024

Foraging Focus: Stinging Nettle – April 9, 2024

Backyard Composting – April 13 & 27, 2024

Gluten Free Bread Baking – April 27, 2024

Also, for our 20th Anniversary, please join us for a special community Summer Solstice Celebration on June 22, 2024!


Gather

Foraging & Herb classes

Foraging is the act of finding and gathering wild foods. By engaging in this age-old practice, we can provide ourselves with healthy and abundant food and medicine, become more self-reliant, and connect on a much deeper level to the landscape in which we live.

Foraging programs explore not only wild edibles, but ways that foragers can practice ethics, tend wild spaces, understand plant uses beyond edibility, and (re)build a sense of place within nature.

The Horn Farm Center offers monthly foraging walks alongside special foraging opportunities throughout the year.


The Horn Farm Center sits at the heart of the Lower Susquehanna Riverlands: a lush bioregion teeming with life that is both resilient and vulnerable. Mosaic ecosystems and dynamic seasons invite us to explore, to wonder, and to rekindle caring partnerships with nature wherever we may be.

Join us to learn more about the beauty and power of local ecosystems and the individuals that create them. Through educational walks in the Horn Farm Center’s woodlands and meadows, regional ecology classes explore the plants and animals who live among us, the broader networks that support life around us, and the skills we can build for healing degraded landscapes in ways that ask, “what would nature do?”

Wonder

Regional Ecology classes


Harvest

Gardening & Composting classes

We believe that agriculture has the potential to regenerate life. Therefore, we view farming and gardening not just as practices for growing food and fodder, but as acts of relationship with the land: restoring soils, protecting waterways, promoting biodiversity, and localizing our impacts.

Gardening and composting classes invite everyone from first-time food growers, seasoned gardeners, and folks interested in living more eco-consciously to learn home-scale practices and techniques for working with the natural world in regenerative ways: benefiting both nature and ourselves.

Composting workshops teach simple, affordable methods for turning food scraps into fertilizer. Gardening workshops offer varied topics to help new and experienced gardeners expand their toolkits and lead with environmental consciousness.


From kneading bread to natural dyes, there is no shortage of creative skills that can bring us joy and health while localizing the gifts and goods we produce. Our maker-centered workshops help participants learn not only how to create quality foods and items from scratch, but why doing so is good for ourselves and the land.

The Horn Farm Center’s kitchen classes take place in our fully-restored 19th century Summer Kitchen, certified and registered by the PA Department of Agriculture and equipped for hands-on cooking and learning experiences. The building’s most unique feature is its original wood-fired Squirrel Tail oven built in PA German-style, which has historically been the centerpiece of bread-baking workshops. Other common workshops include vegetable preparation, herbal medicine-making, fermentation, and preservation.

Craft classes are making a comeback, with past topics including natural textile printing, fiber arts, basketry, and photography.

Create

Kitchen & Craft classes


wild-lands-immersion

Rewild

Land-Based Skills classes

We believe that connecting with nature is the key to a regenerative future. The Horn Farm Center’s land-based skills classes are designed to immerse students in the natural world and reconnect them with their sense of place.

Students gain hands-on experience with basic, pre-industrial, woodland-style survival skills/bushcraft.

Classes include gathering wild foods and medicine, building debris-huts, animal tracking, fire-making techniques such as hand-drill and bow drill, making basic hunting implements such as a survival bow and simple traps, and much more!


Movement is not optional.

Whether we’re hiking, gardening, cooking, or even sitting, we’re asking our bodies to engage in some way. Modern lifestyles often inhibit or monotonize movement, leading to greater risk of strain, injury, exhaustion, and frustration during dynamic activities–especially those that are part of reconnecting with the natural world, like exploring the outdoors, planting seedlings, and stewarding ecosystems.

During the warmer months, the Horn Farm Center offers group Practical Movement sessions to help folks better listen to the language of their bodies and adopt daily practices for physical wellness with confidence. We recognize the reciprocal connections between physical health, mental health, and the health of the land, striving to build a culture of lifelong earth care based on bodily awareness and resilience.

Move

Practical Movement classes


Reflect

Regional History classes

In order to build regenerative relationships with the natural world today, it is imperative that we look back into our past.

Unearth the geological, archaeological, and cultural histories of Lower Susquehanna Riverlands by joining us for special regional history classes, where we’ll explore the natural forces and human activities that have shaped the region we call home. Through studying the stories and scars of the past, we can better understand the land we live on, the legacies we’ve inherited, and possibilities for our future.


Description coming soon!

kids classes

Discover

Youth & Family classes