Horn Farm Happenings – October 5
Our friends Johann of Fields Without Fences and Jared of Wild Ridge Plants traveled from New Jersey to check out our regenerative agriculture projects.
We toured the fields, stream corridors, and woods talking about the best ways to interact with the land for our mutual benefit. In this photo, Wilson explains the design and construction of a lean-to check dam, which is our best performing design for preventing sediment of all sizes from moving downstream. Our goal is no loss of soil from the farm.
What is regenerative agriculture? In week two of this 12 part series, we’ll consider this indicator of an ecologically healthy farm system: decreasing dependence on external inputs. As we design different operations of the farm, we keep in mind ways to reduce the materials and services we purchase. Some examples of things include compost (we could make our own), plant stakes (we could grow our own), seeds (we could save our own), potting soil (we could make our own), electricity, propane, diesel, and gasoline. By redesigning and replanting certain areas we can reduce our need for lawn mowing. By building a composting toilet system we can eliminate porta-potty maintenance. What other things or services could we provide for ourselves?
Interested in beekeeping and don’t know where to begin? Join us for Beekeeping for Bee-ginners! This two-hour class on October 11 is an introduction to the fundamentals of keeping bees. You’ll gain an understanding of honeybee biology, basic beekeeping practices, and guidance on how to start keeping bees. There are only three spots left, so register today!
We harvested two raised beds of sweet potatoes this week.
After harvest, one was planted with spinach which will over winter and be ready for harvest early next year. In the second bed, we’d originally planned to plant garlic, but realized that we’d have to cover the bed with row cover early next year to prevent the allium leaf miner from laying eggs on the garlic. The hoops and row cover are too short to protect the combined height of the garlic plus raised bed, so the garlic will get planted in a flat part of the farm. Once the sweet potatoes cure, they will be distributed to CSA shareholders.
CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Shares
Here is what we plan to include in this week’s CSA shares:
Potatoes
Kale
Sweet Peppers
Hot peppers
Green beans
Scallions
Onions
Garlic
Summer squash
Winter squash
Mixed mints
Upcoming events:
October 7 – Children’s Discovery Series: Let’s Bee Friends
October 11 – Beekeeping for Bee-ginners
October 13 – Foraging: Wild Soup
October 14 – Harvest Festival & Annual Open House
October 16 – Bread Baking Basics
October 26 – Offal: Tongue, Brains, and More!
October 20, 21 – Wilderness Skills Overnight Immersion
November 17 – Bread Baking Full Day Workshop
November 17 – Foraging: Roots
December 8 – Foraging: Winter
See you at the farm!
Examples of degradation or resource loss on the farm include soil erosion, water runoff, loss of biohabitat (suitable places for a variety of bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals to live), loss of biodiversity–directly connected to loss of biohabitat, but also related to planting too much of one thing, the planting of identical seed (clones) rather than seed of rich genetic diversity.
We are looking forward to trying this recipe: 
This morning we welcomed juniors and seniors enrolled in the Political Ecology of Food and Agriculture course at Franklin & Marshall College to tour our project: Regenerative Farmscape West. This 30-acre project focuses on using land management practices which not only ‘do no harm’ but actively seek to revitalize the soil and water resources of the farm. They were introduced to the project on Wednesday by Woodland Steward, Wilson Alvarez, who led a lecture and discussion at the college.
Students got an overview of the entire project which includes the farming internship, CSA farm, farm business incubator, stream restoration, and planting of perennial crops in agroforestry systems. In addition to diversifying the crops grown on the farm, and improving the ecological health of the farm, this project will positively affect the health of the waterways downstream, namely, Kreutz Creek, the Susquehanna River, and eventually the Chesapeake Bay.
