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Support a More Resilient Future

Wildflower Walks & Spring Ephemerals

Spring wildflower walks in the south-central PA woods are a special treat – have you met any of our native ephemerals this year?

This past week, participants in our 2026 Regenerative Grower Training Program and greenhouse interns took a field trip to experience the magic of ephemerals at Green Light Plants Nursery, with Dale Hendricks. Highlights from the tour included one of our students seeing Jack-in-the-Pulpit for the first time, spotting the first zebra swallowtail of the season, and witnessing Dale’s flourishing polyculture native plant nursery.

What are spring ephemerals? Deriving their name from the Greek word meaning “lasting only a day” or “fleeting,” ephemerals are specialized species of flowers that only visit us for a short period of time each spring. They grow, bloom, and set seed all before the tree canopy has shaded out their forest floor home. Here one day, and gone the next! Virginia bluebells, ramps, trout lilies, and trillium are just a few examples of the treasured ephemerals now blooming in our area.

Elements of Survival: Spring Series

Learning to work with nature is a powerful way to build personal resilience and confidence. This spring, we invite you to reconnect with the natural world and build practical skills in Elements of Survival, a three-part wilderness series exploring the essential forces of Water, Earth & Air, and Fire with Stetler Survival.

Held Saturdays from 1–4pm beginning May 9, each hands-on class blends practical “make and take” projects with outdoor instruction—teaching you how to find and purify water, build shelter, and safely create and use fire.

Join for one session or the full series and leave with handmade tools, practical knowledge, and the confidence to thrive in the outdoors. Suitable for ages 12+ with an adult, and welcoming to beginners and experienced learners alike.

Check out Stetler Survival’s recent Micro-Survival Kit class at Horn Farm Center.

Plants, Music, Local Vendors & More!

Springing into Learning at the Horn Farm

What do salamanders, saws, and sprouts have in common? A weekend of learning at the Horn Farm! At the end of March, we were joined by over 40 program participants for an eclectic mix of educational experiences.

EM*POWER*ING LOCAL LIVING | In our Intro to Power Tools class with Tierra Sagrada School, students nailed down carpentry essentials by building a picnic table! Developing confidence with power tools can go a long way—empowering people to take on their own home renovations and DIY projects while living more sustainably.

SPOTTING SPRINGTIME SALAMANDERS | We turned our attention to the signs of spring, flipping logs and rocks in search of salamanders making their way to vernal pools and streams. After a lesson on identification and safe handling, young naturalists in our Critter Crawl class got to see these amphibians in action! Along the way, students discovered why salamanders are important in our local ecosystems, and how we can help protect them.

SAVORING THE SPROUTS | There’s nothing quite like the first taste of fresh spring greens. In our Grow Your Own Microgreens class, participants spent the morning in the greenhouse preparing trays and sampling these flavorful mini-vegetables. Thanks to our program sponsor, Bootstrap Farmer, everyone went home with a microgreen kit ready to grow. We even received a spotlight from local recipe blogger Sarah Mock, who shared her experience on her site, Savoring the Good.

More weekends like this await as spring classes unfurl at the Horn Farm Center!

Get Ready to Give Local: April 30-May 1

Mark your calendars for Give Local York! Starting at 7:00pm on April 30th until 7:00pm on May 1st, you can make a big impact by supporting the Horn Farm Center.

Help us provide hands-on programs that connect people to the land, build practical skills, and inspire ecological stewardship across our community. Every gift sustains a place where people of all ages can learn, grow, and cultivate a more resilient future together.

Stay tuned for how you can help us sow the seeds of change in York and beyond!

Foraging for Knowledge & Nourishment

Step into the season and discover the abundance growing all around us. Foraging is a way to deepen your connection to the land, expand your knowledge of local ecosystems, and build personal resilience through wild, nutritious foods.

There are plenty of opportunities to get outside and learn about foraging this spring:

• Shoots & Leaves: Early Spring Foraging Walk April 12th | 10AM – 12PM
• Stinging Nettle: Foraging & Tasting April 23rd | 5:30 – 7:30PM
• Greens Galore: Mid-Spring Foraging Walk May 3rd | 10AM – 12PM
• Mycology Meanderings: Spring Mushroom Walk May 3rd | 1PM – 3PM
• Blooms & Berries: Late Spring Foraging Walk June 7th| 10AM – 12PM

Explore the wild and learn how to harvest responsibly!

Agroforestry in Action with Elderberries

What does it look like to destem 50 pounds of elderberry in under a minute?

This week, our staff had a chance to test out a new piece of equipment that will transform agroforestry education at the Horn Farm Center. Thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service through the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) Foundation, we purchased a highly efficient elderberry de-stemmer this winter!

Elderberries play a major role in the Horn Farm’s learning landscape. Exemplifying the practice of agroforestry, they bring together farming and conservation. That’s why elderberries are a hallmark of streamside buffers, forest gardens, and other perennial systems at the Horn Farm. They produce an abundant crop, but not at the cost of healthy soil, clean water, and biodiversity.

Separating fruit from the stems is an important step in processing elderberries for market, but it’s tedious and time-consuming by hand. With this machine, we’ll grow our capacity to provide the fruits of our educational landscape to the community! After all, in order to support agroforestry in Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic, we can’t just grow the plants. We need to reach consumers, and in doing so, educate more and more people about the value of small-scale, ecological farming.

We’re grateful to elderberry crop consultant, Andrea Ferich of Ironwood Forestry (pictured bottom left above), for helping our team develop best practices to prepare our elderberry crop for market. Through a new strategic plan, Andrea is also providing market research to help guide future production and sales.

Interested in collaborating? We are looking to connect with other elderberry growers and customers in our region, so please reach out!

There’s much more to this grant project and its impact on the Horn Farm Center’s agroforestry program, including hazelnuts! We look forward to sharing additional updates in the months ahead.

Funding for this project was made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USDA.

Summer Kitchen: Learning Trail Preview

If you’ve attended a cooking or foraging class at the Horn Farm, you may have spent time in our Summer Kitchen. But do you know where this little building next to the farmhouse gets its name?

During summer months in the 19th century, the Summer Kitchen was the hub for cooking. This kept open fires out of the farmhouse, helping maintain more comfortable temperatures in the family’s main living quarters. In the winter, cooking returned to the home as a way to generate warmth, while the Summer Kitchen went into a “hibernation” of-sorts by becoming a storage space for preserved fruit, vegetables, and grains.

Even though we use the Summer Kitchen for cooking demonstrations in all seasons today, this unique building offers a taste of the Horn Farm’s agricultural history.

Thanks to a grant from the Susquehanna National Heritage Area’s Heritage Partner Program, new interpretative signage arriving at the Horn Farm this summer will help tell more of this story! We’ll be sharing more previews as this project continues to unfold over the coming weeks.

Avary Sassaman: Wildlife Warrior

Recently, our Community Engagement Coordinator, Avary Sassaman, had the chance to put her passion for wildlife rescue into action right here in our neighborhood. When a nearby property owner reached out with questions about a distressed juvenile eastern screech owl, Avary stepped in, equipped and ready, to safely transport the tiny bird to a local wildlife rescue. Moments like these remind us how care for the land extends to all who call it home.

Want to learn more about Wildlife Rescue and how you can be a wildlife warrior like Avary? Join us on April 11th at 10AM for Backyard Wildlife: Safety & Rehabilitation with Raven Ridge at the Horn Farm!