Tag Archive: Susquehanna

Abundantly Festive, Even with Fewer Fruits

What to Expect at the Pawpaw Festival in a Year Like No Other.

On Saturday, September 19th, the Horn Farm Center will host the 22nd York County Pawpaw Festival. This annual tradition brings people together to celebrate North America’s largest edible tree fruit, the pawpaw (Asmina triloba), which ripens for a short stretch of time each September. It’s a local food unlike any other – prized for its flavor, savored for its brevity, and beloved as a wild staple of the Lower Susquehanna Riverlands.

But pawpaw isn’t invincible. In the wake of a devastating spring for tree fruits, many people are wondering: how did the pawpaw fare? Was it affected as badly as apples and peaches? Will there be fresh fruit at the festival? Should we even go!?

Here’s what we know for certain: pawpaw crops were significantly impacted, and as a result, the 2026 festival will look different.

Unlike previous years, the availability of fresh pawpaw fruit will be limited. Nonetheless there will be plenty of opportunities to experience this fantastic fruit at the Festival – from pawpaw foods and beverages to merchandise and fanfare.

The Horn Farm Center is excited to host an extraordinary Festival this year, featuring unique regional foods, expanded education and entertainment, and a full weekend of fun and adventure thanks to our Wild & Uncommon partners.

Read on to learn about this year’s unprecedented circumstances and the top five reasons why this year’s Festival is still a must-do.

A Devastating Spring for Tree Fruits

Following consecutive nights of freezing temperatures between April 19th and 21st, fruit growers across Pennsylvania were reeling from the astounding losses that quickly became apparent. Words like “catastrophic,” “disastrous,” and “freakish” hit the headlines, and they weren’t sensational. A bulletin posted on June 1st by Penn State Agricultural Sciences reported that “current estimates suggest losses of 70% to 90% across many fruit crops [ … ] the damage is unlike anything many growers have seen in their lifetimes.” The Maryland Department of Agriculture echoed this sobering assessment, calling April’s freeze “one of the most significant crop losses in recent memory.”

From apples, peaches, and plums to apricots, cherries, and grapes, local orchards are now counting fruits by the handful. The Horn Farm Center’s teaching staff even experienced the losses during this spring’s foraging programs, skipping fruits like mulberry and wild cherry that usually sweeten our spring classes. Pawpaw growers may be fewer in number than conventional orchard farmers, but they too took a major hit. Our friends and partners at Threefold Farm in Mechanicsburg, PA shared the news in a Facebook post on May 9th:

“The result was a near total loss of all pawpaw blooms and first shoots … We had the odd pawpaw here and there that somehow made it through, but it was likely 0.1% that survived that kind of cold.”

*Image of wilted pawpaw flowers posted on Facebook by Threefold Farm following the late April freeze.*

With ancient roots in the Lower Susquehanna Riverlands, it might seem surprising that pawpaws didn’t fare better. After all, their evolutionary history on this continent exceeds that of apples, grapes, and other cultivated fruits introduced from Eurasia. But despite the natural resilience of the pawpaw, this spring’s freeze was an anomaly. Unusually hot and humid temperatures in mid-April prompted fruit trees to break their dormancy prematurely. Flower buds opened, fueled by the summer-like warmth, only to be struck down the following week when overnight temperatures plummeted.

While devastated by the near-total crop losses that resulted, many people who make a living growing fruits also recognize how these unpredictable weather events are becoming, ironically, the “new norm.” Baltimore Magazine approached Two Boots Farm in Hampstead, Maryland about their pawpaw orchard, writing how “chasing after mercurial weather has become the norm at Two Boots. ‘This is what scientists have told us, that this is the direction weather is going, with more unpredictability and extreme weather events.’”

Bringing Change: Impacts on the 2026 Pawpaw Festival

So what does all of this mean for the York County Pawpaw Festival?

Festival-goers can expect to see fresh fruit at the 2026 festival, but in a very limited supply.

Because of this, limits will be placed on the amount of fruit each individual can purchase–possibly as low as one fruit per person. The actual amount of ripe, sellable fruit we can stock won’t be clear until the week before the festival, but due to the popularity of this annual event, we will be managing fruit inventory in a way that will ensure all attendees have a chance to enjoy pawpaw’s unique tropical flavors.

However, so goes the old adage, necessity breeds invention…Frozen pawpaw from last year’s harvest will provide flavorful tasting opportunities. Unique prepared foods like pawpaw spicebush jam will also be on offer. Many of our food vendors, like Locally Seasoned and Collusion Tapworks, will creatively incorporate pawpaw into meals, baked goods, and drinks, ensuring the flavor and fanfare will continue.

The prospects for wild fruit are also more promising; while orchards were especially vulnerable to the late spring freeze, wild trees were naturally better protected, with fruits higher off the ground and the surrounding forests providing cover.

All told, this year’s fruit shortage is a humbling reflection of the uncertain times we’re in. But with education and community at the core of the Pawpaw Festival, we’re proceeding in the ways ecosystems always have–adaptation, not defeat.

*2025 festival-goers enjoying alternative ways to experience the pawpaw: incorporated into prepared food* *or served as samplers.*

Top Five Reasons the 2026 Pawpaw Festival is Absolutely a Must-Do

“Come for the pawpaws, stay for the experiences!” This has become an unofficial motto of the York County Pawpaw Festival. In the wild, pawpaws don’t grow in a vacuum. They’re part of a complex and fascinating ecology. Just as biodiversity benefits the land, so diverse offerings have increasingly enriched the festival experience.

Here’s a glimpse of what we’re excited for in 2026, and why you should grab your tickets now for September 19!

1. Be Inspired & Learn Something New

The Horn Farm Center offers experiences rooted in the land all year around, and the Pawpaw Festival is no exception. Attendees can tour our pawpaw orchard with Dick Bono, co-founder of the Pawpaw Festival and a passionate pawpaw grower. For questions about cultivation, propagation, and fruit varieties, he’s your resource!

Walking tours of the Horn Farm’s regenerative landscape will also take place throughout the festival, covering agroforestry, land restoration, foraging, and other superpower perennial crops like elderberries and basketry willows. Attendees can also purchase some of these uncommon tree products at the festival.

Among the 40+ vendors you’ll find at the event, many are educators ready to share earth-based wisdom. Our main stage will feature talks from the American Chestnut Foundation, the Penn State Master Gardeners, and more in the works!

2. Get Your Groove On

Between educational talks, four regional bands will serenade festival-goers with music as diverse as a pollinator garden.

Owl Valley Jazz will offer upbeat jazz standards and debut a new piece, “Pawpaw Calypso,” composed for the Pawpaw Festival!

Nodding Onion will return to the Horn Farm with mellow, enchanting plant-based waves (you have to be there see what we mean!). We’re also welcoming two new performers to the festival stage–folk and old-time duo Hippy Dippy Compost Bucket and solo indie-pop artist Weird Mirror, a student in the Horn Farm Center’s Regenerative Grower Training Program!

3. Enjoy Fun Activities for Everyone in the Family

More and more families come out to the Pawpaw Festival each year. Beyond the tastes and the tours, there’s lots of fun to be had!

For 2026, we’re excited to welcome two local creatives who will offer new and interactive experiences in our kids’ area.

Children’s author Cathy Mears-Martin will inspire kids to take eco-friendly actions with her Eco Protection Squad books and activities. Sarah Steinhauer’s “Art Anywhere” program invites all ages to get creative with reused and recycled materials, blending hands-on public art with take-home projects.

Other popular family-friendly activities will also resurface for the 2026 Festival, including make-and-take flower crowns with Horn Farm-grown willows and wildflowers, a Pawpaw Coloring Contest, and a Pawpaw Scavenger Hunt.

4. Indulge in Uncommon Eats

Ever tried pawpaw beer? Pawpaw chutney? Pawpaw baked goods? Pawpaw hot sauce? Even pawpaw SOAP (not for eating, of course!)

In 2025, Pawpaw Festival vendors understood the assignment, transforming this funky and fleeting fruit into unforgettable treats for festival-goers to try and buy. The enthusiasm for exploring all of pawpaw’s culinary possibilities continues, so we’re eager to see what 2026 will bring! One big highlight that will return this year is Collusion Tapwork’s pawpaw ale.

Beyond pawpaw offerings, we’ve also got a mouth-watering spread of local food trucks and prepared food vendors on deck. Burgers, coffee, popcorn, granola, keto and gluten-free goods–you name it!

The gastronomic experiences even extend beyond the Pawpaw Festival, with Locally Seasoned hosting a pawpaw cooking class on Sunday, September 20th and Collusion Tapworks offering a small-batch pawpaw sour on tap at their York location, September 17-18 “until the keg kicks.”

5. Celebrate with Earth-Loving Community

It’s always a pleasure to see so many people converging at the Horn Farm to enjoy good company, savor local flavors, and learn about the land.

For the green-thumbs, five native plant vendors will offer enough vegetation to grow a forest--nut trees, perennial herbs, and, of course, pawpaw trees, which are always in high demand. In fact, pawpaw trees have a history of selling out at the festival, so encourage getting a ticket for an early entry time if you want one!

The September landscape at the Horn Farm is also a sight to see. Asters, goldenrod, and sunchokes in bloom; wild pawpaws bearing fruits; pollinators buzzing about for their final rounds of the growing season. A walk around the farm offers not only education, but a sense of wonder in a place where agriculture and natural ecosystems coexist.

With so much to do and see, the 2026 Pawpaw Festival can’t be missed.

So of course, when asked whether it’s worth the trip, we say “yes, you absolutely must attend the Pawpaw Festival!”

Ask anyone operating a small farm this year and they’ll tell you: now especially is a time to double down and support your local growers, even amid scarcity. And there’s a bonus sixth reason for you!

The Pawpaw Festival isn’t just the Horn Farm Center’s largest annual fundraiser. It’s also our way of giving farmers, pawpaw growers and other small businesses the customers they need to stay afloat. The growers we support are working tirelessly to foster a regenerative future — one where native perennials and tree crops are the norm rather than the exception, where biodiversity abounds, and where farming leaves a lighter impact on the land. So, while mother nature has confronted us with a challenging year, we hope to see you at the Horn Farm for another joyous, educational, and memorable Pawpaw Festival!

Learn More:

2026 York County Pawpaw Festival | Saturday, September 19, 9AM-5PM

2026 Wild & Uncommon Weekend | Thursday, September 17 – Sunday, September 20

Wild & Uncommon Weekend: Come for the Pawpaws, Stay for Transformative Experiences!

Each year, the Horn Farm Center hosts a popular festival for a strange and fleeting native fruit–“America’s forgotten” pawpaw. The Pawpaw Festival is just one of the many ways we connect people with the natural landscape.

Ever tasted, or even heard of, a pawpaw?

This unusual native fruit–a northern outlier of an otherwise tropical fruit family–grows in abundance across forests and hillsides in the Lower Susquehanna Riverlands. With a shelf life that lasts in the blink of an eye, pawpaws are a tantalizing treat of the late summer for locals and visitors alike, which is why the York County Pawpaw Festival, celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2024, is now a 4-day extravaganza highlighting all the “Wild & Uncommon” offerings of our vibrant landscape.

Pawpaw fruit from the Horn Farm Center’s pawpaw orchard, which grows over 20 cultivated varieties. The vast majority of pawpaws occur in wild habitats–forested river hills and valley bottoms–across the Lower Susquehanna Region.

Bringing together unique local foods, native plants, nature-based education, and the iconic pawpaw that started it all, the 2024 Wild & Uncommon Weekend will take place from September 26th to 29th. At the center of these festivities, the Horn Farm Center is hosting the annual Pawpaw Festival on September 28th from 9am to 5pm. Pre-purchased tickets are required to attend.

This popular event is often the first thing that comes to mind for locals who’ve heard of the Horn Farm Center. For many curious visitors, too, the Horn Farm is a one-day nexus for sampling the alluring pawpaw. In fact, many festival-goers over the years hail from New England, the Midwest, Florida and Georgia, and even as far as Canada, all drawn to the region by this peculiar fruit! The event features pawpaws for sale alongside local environmental organizations, native plant nurseries, nature-focused activities, and regional food vendors, many offering special pawpaw-inspired goodies!

Vendors and patrons at the 2023 Pawpaw Festival.

But unlike the pawpaw, with its seasonal limits and notoriously fleeting shelf life, the Horn Farm Center offers an abundance of learning opportunities all year around. If you’re planning to join the fun for the Horn Farm’s 2024 Wild & Uncommon Weekend, it’s worth getting to know a bit more about the small, resilient, and locally-rooted nonprofit behind this big event!

Connecting People with the Land

The Horn Farm Center’s mission is to foster ecological learning through land stewardship, community partnership, and hands-on experiences. Established as a nonprofit in 2004 after locals came together to halt development on historic farmland, the 186 acres that make up the Horn Farm Center are forever protected under the York County Farm and Natural Lands Trust. This preserves over 250 years of agricultural and natural heritage; moreover, it provides a space for visitors from York County and beyond to grow in connection with the local landscape.

Educational & Transformational

The Horn Farm Center cultivates that connection in many ways. Classes held throughout the year help people explore diverse pathways for deepening their relationship with the natural world. Popular examples include foraging walks, composting workshops, rustic cooking and fermentation classes, and multi-week training programs on topics like regenerative land stewardship, ecological gardening, foraging, and sustainable beekeeping. Next to the Center’s historic farmhouse and summer kitchen, dozens of community garden plots quilt the land, providing a valuable resource for local green thumbs to grow food for family and neighbors.

Innovative & Inspiring

Across the wider landscape, the Horn Farm demonstrates innovative approaches to restoration and agriculture. Plots supporting local farm businesses rub shoulders with active restoration areas promoting biodiversity and ecological health. Prolific rows of elderberry, American hazelnut, willows, and other perennial crops provide food, medicine, and materials while also bolstering stream health along the farm’s margins. Many of these spaces have been planted and continue to be tended with the support of volunteers.

Some areas are even intentionally progressing toward total wildness. As part of restoration efforts in over 16 acres of riparian (streamside) zones, the Horn Farm has planted dozens of high-density, biodiverse “mini-forests.” These Miyawaki forests, named after the Japanese botanist who pioneered them, are the first plantings of their kind on the east coast!

Volunteers helping to restore a riparian buffer by planting a Miyawaki “mini-forest” with native trees and shrubs.

The common thread across the Horn Farm’s agricultural and natural spaces is one of unity: bringing together what are often considered divergent approaches to land management. The Center demonstrates how farming and health ecology can work in harmony to promote the long-term wellbeing of people and place.

Thinking Like an Ecosystem: Ways to Grow Connected

So, while the Wild & Uncommon Pawpaw Festival brought over 2000 visitors to the farm in recent years, the Horn Farm is always a busy ecosystem–buzzing with class participants, pollinators, tour groups, volunteers, beneficial soil microbes, community gardeners, migratory birds, patrons of local businesses, and all the members of our regional ecological food webs.

Everyone is connected by a love for working with and learning from the earth: an essential part of growing greater ecological and community wellbeing.

Volunteers creating “brushwood bundles” of harvested willow during the Horn Farm’s Winter Willow Workdays.

Interested in exploring the many ways you can join the Horn Farm ecosystem? Consider registering for a class, volunteering, donating, or scheduling a tour with your school or community group. And of course, don’t forget to save the date for the York County Pawpaw Festival and Wild & Uncommon Weekend, happening September 26-29, 2024.

Explore Classes: hornfarmcenter.org/classes/

Explore Training Programs: hornfarmcenter.org/training-programs/

Explore Tours: hornfarmcenter.org/tours/

Explore Volunteering: hornfarmcenter.org/volunteer/

Explore the Land: hornfarmcenter.org/virtual-tour/

Explore Business Sponsorships: hornfarmcenter.org/sponsorship/

Donate: hornfarmcenter.org/donate/

About the Author:

Andrew Leahy (Community Engagement Coordinator)

While studying English Literature and Music Composition at Muhlenberg College, he gravitated toward nonprofit engagement as a work study student. Now, at the Horn Farm Center, Andrew develops and leads educational programs, coordinates volunteer events, manages social media, and collaborates on marketing projects, large events, and organizational capacity-building. Through all of this, he is a dedicated student of the land, with a life’s mission of learning (and providing spaces for others to learn) about bioregional ecology, regenerative agriculture, ethical foraging, ethnobotany, and locally-focused ways of living in reciprocal relationship with nature.

Outside of the Horn Farm Center, Andrew enjoys spending his time hiking the trails of York and Lancaster Counties, going for bike rides, cooking nourishing local (and oftentimes foraged!) meals, reading, journaling, and frequenting York County gems like Leg Up Farmers Market, Refillism, and York Central Market.

For the Whole Stream: Riparian Buffers

Part 2: Downstream

Read For the Whole Stream Part 1: Upstream here.

For the Whole Stream is the first installment of a new series called the Horn Farm Ecosystem. Through periodic articles, we’ll walk the land in writing: visiting the forests, regenerative fields, and ecological action sites of the Horn Farm Center to explain our stewardship work, uplift nature, and inspire love for the land. To learn more about the Horn Farm Ecosystem blog series, check out our February 17th, 2023 newsletter.

Like a drop of water in a stream, ecology ripples outward.

Actions taken (or neglected) in one place have resounding impacts elsewhere over time. Non-native introductions that did not start at the Horn Farm Center have given us the likes, tests, and uses (note the paradox) of multiflora rose, Japanese honeysuckle, garlic mustard, Japanese stiltgrass, and tree of heaven. Each of these plants–without a native niche or co-evolutionary partnership to balance its influence–was once a newcomer here in some seemingly innocuous form. And now, they’ve all reshaped the ecology of our landscape, in many ways monopolizing our land tending energies. Once a drop, now pervasive, plucked from a place beyond the scope of what we can see.

The same story of compounding impacts unfolds for beneficial engagement with the land. Replanting natives where non-natives have been removed reverberates outward to support the species they host, the plants those species pollinate, and the food chains they underpin. Stopping the cycle of tilling soils in farming bolsters soil stability, improves water infiltration, replenishes soil nutrients and microbiology, enhances crop vitality, and contributes to carbon drawdown from the atmosphere, not to mention the benefits of reduced stormwater runoff on neighboring waterways and habitats. Over time, one lever releases many, and the catalyst of change can begin small. The humble backyard, the wayward farm, the thin edge of a streamside … if you haven’t already taken Douglas Tallamy’s hint about bringing habitat home here, this is your cue. As we work to rebuild ecological balance in one place, that act of recovery may well be exported along the world’s energy flows–carried by the wind, water, seeds, scat, and human messaging. Our riparian buffer, of course, is no exception.

How exactly? As noted in Part 1 of this blog set, our eroded stream deposits into Kreutz Creek, which flows into the Susquehanna River. Kreutz Creek is one vein among thousands tethered to a crucial ecological artery. The Susquehanna River meanders 444 miles south from its headwaters in central New York, carving down Pennsylvania before cutting briefly into Maryland and emptying into the Chesapeake Bay. Given its size and might, the Susquehanna River is one of the primary water channels of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

*All of the creeks, streams, and rivers encompassed in the highlighted area eventually drain into the Chesapeake Bay.* *Source: PA Department of Environmental Protection*.

In fact, nearly half of the freshwater flow into the Chesapeake comes from the Susquehanna River, making it the largest water contributor to the bay. This means that Pennsylvanians, not one of us in viewing distance of the Bay, have a surprisingly crucial role to play in addressing the degradation of downstream ecologies in the Chesapeake.

As the environmental pressures of development and agriculture continue across the watershed, the Chesapeake Bay has become a collecting ground for chemical and nutrient pollution, excess sediments, and other waste carried away by the exposed waterways that feed it.

Indeed, it’s estimated that 65% of the nitrogen and phosphorous polluting the Chesapeake have come from Pennsylvania.

Carried by stormwater runoff, most of this pollution originates from bufferless, steam-adjacent farms that rely on nutrient inputs to feed large-scale crop production on ailing soils (manure is a part of this problem as well). Nutrient pollution at this scale, alongside sedimentation, has spelled existential trouble for the Chesapeake over time. Biodiversity has suffered with seagrasses, shellfish, and fish succumbing to depleted oxygen levels in the water, caused by both over-sedimentation and unchecked algae blooms fueled by nutrient pollution. (Note: algal blooms can cause direct harm beyond aquatic life, potentially harboring toxins that threaten human health). Loss of biodiversity to this degree, echoing the stream habitats in our backyards, has implications that ripple out: destabilizing food chains, upsetting local economies, and undercutting the Bay’s resilience as a storm buffer against increasingly powerful weather.

Since the EPA’s heightened attention to the Bay in 2010, PA farmers and property owners have responded increasingly to statewide calls (and incentives) for waterway protection using riparian buffers. The state fell short of conservation targets in 2017 and recommitted through robust riparian programs emphasizing agroforestry in buffer design–an angle taken up at the Horn Farm Center (more to come on that!).

Between this growing movement, increasingly common torrential rains, and a keen interest in ecological land stewardship, the Horn Farm Center broke ground on our first riparian buffer planting in 2018.

As the planting and learning continues, we’ve come to see the riparian buffer not just as an enactment of our responsibility to ailing lands and waters around us, but as a teaching tool–a window perhaps–into how ecology works. That is: how ecology teaches us that small changes can bring about resonant impacts, and to recognize that our proactivity (or neglect) in one area determines outcomes for areas and systems even beyond our scope. For every upstream, there is an innumerable family of downstreams.

*Volunteers planting trees and installing tree tubes in support of our water protection efforts (10/2021).*

As beneficiaries of the soils, lands, and waters nourished by the Susquehanna, the Chesapeake, and the generations that tended this landscape before dominant culture abandoned the caretaker lifeway, it’s only right for us to lean back, reacquaint ourselves with the ground, and work to bring back balance in whatever capacity we can. Because when we nurture and bolster an ecosystem at home, we hold the key to rebalancing it elsewhere, and restoring humility to ourselves in the process.

Click here to read For the Whole Stream Part 3: Beyond the Stream

About the Author: Andrew Leahy

Growing up in the foothills of Ricketts Glen State Park, Andrew spent his early life in the embrace of Northeastern PA forests, sowing the seeds for his ongoing enchantment with the natural world and its stewardship. While studying English and Music Composition at Muhlenberg College, he gravitated toward nonprofit engagement as a work study student in the college’s Office of Community Engagement. Now, at the Horn Farm Center, Andrew manages social media, develops educational programs, coordinates volunteer events, and collaborates on marketing projects, large events, and organizational capacity-building. Through all of this, he is a dedicated student of the land, with a life’s mission of learning (and providing spaces for others to learn) about bioregional ecology, regenerative agriculture, permaculture, foraging, and locally-focused ways of living in reciprocal relationship with nature.