Horn Farm Happenings – December 12, 2025
Warm Up for Spring with Winter Webinars
“Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius” – Pietro Aretino
There’s no better time than winter for scheming and dreaming for the upcoming season. That’s why we’re excited to welcome the new year with a new way to engage with land-based learning! Join the Horn Farm’s staff and special guest presenters throughout the winter months for our fully-virtual Winter Webinar Series —Regenerative Roots: Ecological Action for the Local Landscape.
Over six sessions, we’ll dig deep into regenerative land care, spotlighting ways we can benefit local ecosystems while feeding and nourishing people. From community-centered agroforestry to backyard restoration, you’ll learn how to act intentionally for the land, reviving the relationships we need to ensure mutual wellbeing for ourselves and nature.
Program highlights include gardening like the forest, planting mini-forests, and unpacking our culture’s obsession with lawns!
Register for Winter Webinar Series
Many Hands Make Impactful Work
As fall wraps up, we’re feeling the gratitude for our volunteers! Spreading leaf mulch, planting shrubs, and harvesting willows, a community of friends helped enrich our educational ecosystem in exciting ways!
In the demonstration field, a new teaching space for forest gardening is taking shape. Volunteers from our Community Crew service learning program planted over 90 elderberries and chokeberries, which will soon find good company with a groundcover of wild ginger and other native plant neighbors. All together, this plant community will provide a teaching model for multi-layered production, inspired by natural ecosystems and replicable in places like backyards and small farms.
Across the farm, in our multifunctional riparian buffer, another 200 native shrubs are now taking root thanks to volunteers from York College of PA and Lincoln Intermediate Unit 12. Last year we launched our first live stake sale to support restoration efforts in our community. Thanks to grant support from GIANT and Keep PA Beautiful, the newest plantings will help us expand these offerings, providing more native plant cuttings for local land stewards while bolstering ecological and educational value on our landscape.
Lastly, we just wrapped up with our first run of Winter Willow Workdays. Over two blustery afternoons, volunteers helped us gather and sort thousands of basketry willow branches for drying over the winter. If you’re curious about this agroforestry crop and want to help continue the harvest, join us for our perennial volunteer gatherings on January 18th, 19th & 20th.
P.S. – If you’re crafting this winter, Horn Farm’s basketry willow varieties are now available for purchase online: hornfarmcenter.org/shop
Wrap Up Some Magic This Season
Looking for meaningful, locally rooted holiday gifts? Share the spirit of the Horn Farm Center’s land-healing and heart-inspiring work.
- Gift Certificates: Perfect for the adventurous nature-lover or green thumb on your list, give a gift of hands-on learning experiences!
- T-Shirts: Shop for wearable art from our collection of Horn Farm t-shirts, designed to celebrate our values and ecological focus.
- Basketry Willow: Crafters will love this regeneratively-grown crafting material for weaving and natural works of art.
Every purchase supports our mission and brings a little bit of the Horn Farm Center’s special care and creativity to someone you love.
Sweet Rewards: Become a Beekeeper
Beekeeping is more than just a hobby; it’s a beneficial practice that boosts local ecosystems by supporting pollination and bee populations. It also offers sweet rewards such as honey, beeswax, and pollen, which can fuel a small business or be used for personal consumption.
Next year, we are hosting our 11th Beekeeper Training Program at the Horn Farm Center. Taught by professional apiarist Mark Gingrich, the program explores all aspects of beekeeping – from the science behind it to managing a hive at home.
Learn alongside a community of budding beekeepers! The program is held once a month from January-October.
At the end of the first year, you will take home your own bee colony. In year two, you’ll have the option to further grow your skills with advanced techniques.
Register now to join next year’s cohort of beekeepers.
The 2026 Beekeeping program begins on January 21, 2026
Register for Beekeeper Training Program
Help Us Move In Next Spring
As we prepare for the grand opening of our new Education Center this spring, we’re collecting a few essential items to make our community hub ready to welcome learners of all ages.
Each gift on our Wish List will support hands-on programs, workshops, and the meaningful connections with nature that make the Horn Farm such a special place.
Holiday shopping this weekend? Please consider the Horn Farm Center while you’re hunting for deals and discounts. Help us open our doors next spring to teach, inspire, and bring people together. Note, in-kind donations are tax-deductible!
Horn Farm’s Move In Wish List
Produce Abundance & Restore the Land
Embark on a year of transformative learning rooted in the land. For students in the Horn Farm’s Regenerative Grower Training Program, growing food is just the beginning.
This part-time field experience spans 33 weeks from February to October and teaches how to produce abundance while restoring the health of the land. From annual vegetables to agroforestry, you’ll design, sow, tend, and harvest alongside our team while building soil, stewarding water, and bolstering biodiversity.
If you feel called to touch the soil and grow your own food, we invite you to apply. Only six spaces are available, and interviews are underway!
WATCH: Learn more about the RGTP
READ: Catch a glimpse of life in the RGTP
JOIN: submit an application today
Together, we’re rekindling the skills our communities need to ensure resilience through an uncertain future. Learn how to feed your family and neighbors resourcefully and responsibly while regenerating the ecosystems we depend on.
