This past weekend’s Summer Solstice Celebration brought together the past and present of the people who make the Horn Farm whole. What a wonderful occasion to commemorate our 20th anniversary!

The atmosphere was relaxed and cheerful as we enjoyed fresh-baked treats from our wood-fired oven, folksy tunes of local musicians Still Limber, a sunset tour of the farm, and a moving dedication for the Evans Memorial Garden–a pollinator paradise planted at the entrance to our Corn Barn by the 2022 Ecological Gardener Training Program. We’re grateful for the stories and memories of June and Warren Evans shared by many in attendance, helping us pay true homage to some of our most influential founding members.

Brought together by the transition of the seasons, we couldn’t have asked for a better way to celebrate our past and look forward to our future! Don’t worry, we are still celebrating our 20th Anniversary throughout 2024.

Join us for our special Homesteading series this summer and fall:

With a BA in Anthropology, she began her career on Capitol Hill working for organizations advocating for public health and early childhood development and education. In the early 2010s Sarah felt the call to begin a fine art practice, and quickly found her penultimate medium in ornamental gardening.

In 2021, Sarah left her job at a corporate distribution center to begin her green industry career, with the ambition of designing, installing and maintaining ecologically beneficial ornamental gardens for a living. Sarah is thrilled to learn and grow at Horn Farm and we’re grateful to have her on our team!

Wild abundance is here throughout the seasons, but we’re particularly fond of this time of year! Mulberries, black raspberries, black cherries, elderflowers, and bundles of wild greens fill our baskets, nourish our bodies, and connect us with the land.Thankfully, we haven’t been alone — we’ve spent the last several weeks fostering a caring community of foragers with our first-ever Forager Training Program. Since May, ten curious foragers have dug deep into the science, craft, and spirit of ethical foraging, experiencing the blossoming transition from early spring to early summer. Next week, we’ll be sending off our foraging trainees with a wild foods meal shared by the class!

Want to learn more about the wild abundance that the land provides? We’ve got numerous foraging opportunities coming down the trail for the summer:

Join the Horn Farm Team!

From their rich medicinal history to their vital roles in ecological cycles, fungi have captivated our curiosity and imagination since the earliest days of our human ancestry.

To embrace and explore this age-old relationship with the fungal world, the Horn Farm Center is partnering with educators from the Eastern Penn Mushroomers Club for a three-part series spotlighting the diversity, versatility, nuance, and significance of nature’s great recyclers.

We’ll enrich our relationships with fungi by exploring their uses and mycology, including cultivation, cooking, biology, land tending, and new frontiers of possibility. In addition, each class will involve a foray in search of fungal specimens at the Horn Farm, conditions permitting.

Join us starting on Saturday, June 8th from 1:30-4:30pm for Fungal Foundations: Spring Mycology Series at the Horn Farm Center!

We are pleased to announce the start of a new land restoration and watershed stewardship project at the Horn Farm Center!In January, Horn Farm Center was awarded $141,145 in grant funding from the PA Department of Environmental Protection’s Growing Greener Program to undertake a large-scale erosion control and restoration project – just north of our recently established 10 acre riparian buffer (funded by DCNR PennVest). The project will address major soil erosion and water runoff issues upstream on the Horn Farm property that impact the Kreutz Creek, Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay.

Our project goals include:

• Stabilizing and restoring 2,100 linear feet of steam beds and banks of 3 unnamed tributaries to Kreutz Creek that are severely eroded;
• Restoring and/or establishing 5 acres of forested riparian buffer;
• Creating 1 acre of riparian forested wetlands;
• And, installing 300 linear feet of a regenerative stormwater step pool conveyance system upstream to capture and infiltrate a portion of runoff during rain events.

The DEP Growing Greener grant will fund the design and permitting phases of the project, which we expect to complete by the end of 2025. Horn Farm Center has partnered with Skelly & Loy, a civil and environmental engineering firm to lead the design. The initial work of assessing the landscape began in April and will continue this summer.

A big thanks to the PA Department of Environmental Protection for valuing the health of our local watersheds and entrusting the Horn Farm Center to do our part. We are absolutely thrilled to further our efforts to build soil health, cultivate wildlife habitat and protect our waterways while continuing to develop new ways to educate our community at the Horn Farm Center.

Photo: Skelly & Loy capturing drone footage to map the project landscape.

Save the Date: Wild & Uncommon Weekend