Red Barn 216

09/18/2026

🚨 PLEASE STOP AT HANOVER & WATER

The Borough has received a report of multiple vehicles failing to stop at the stop sign on Hanover Street at Water Street within just a short period of time.

This intersection has been an ongoing concern, and we want to remind everyone that the stop sign on Hanover Street is not optional.

Please come to a complete stop, look carefully for vehicles and pedestrians, and proceed only when it is safe to do so.

We know most drivers are doing the right thing, but it only takes one vehicle failing to stop for someone to get hurt. Please slow down, pay attention, and help us keep this intersection safe for everyone who lives, walks, and drives through our Borough.

Stop means stop. 🛑

09/10/2026

08/30/2026

Those ridges winding across your lawn aren't what they look like. The animal making them has never eaten a blade of grass in her life.

She's an eastern mole, and she's a carnivore. Her entire diet is underground insects, grubs, and earthworms. She has no interest in roots, bulbs, or grass. The tunnels are hunting runs, pushed through soft soil following grub trails.

🌿 The brown patches that show up in late summer are usually grub damage, not mole damage. The grubs are chewing roots in the top few inches of soil. The mole is chewing the grubs.

She's nearly blind, finds prey by touch and vibration, and can dig about fifteen feet of tunnel in an hour.

Press the ridges back down with your foot. The grass bounces back in days.

The tunnels look like damage. They're a trail map of where she's already been 🐾

08/26/2026

Spooky season is upon us! Book your spooky or spooky dudeior shoot now! Message me to book.

08/15/2026

07/30/2026

FREE upcoming Stop the Bleed classes from WellSpan!

From WellSpan: "A person can bleed to death in less than 5 minutes. Help does not always arrive in time. Participants in this class will learn to recognize serious bleeding and how to stop bleeding by holding pressure, wound packing, and using tourniquets."

Recently, several members of the York County Office of Emergency Management attended a Stop the Bleed class in York. The class atmosphere was informative and non-stressful and we left feeling empowered that we could help someone if the need arose.

You can too. Here are some upcoming classes:

In York on 10/8/26: https://www.wellspan.org/WellSpan-Spotlight/Events/14635

In Gettysburg on 8/20/26: https://www.wellspan.org/WellSpan-Spotlight/Events/14599

07/27/2026

There's a joke that barn owls must have been stoked when humans invented barns, but the reality is more grim than that.

Barn owls rely on human structures, like barns, sheds, and nest boxes, because modern farming and development has taken down the large trees that would have been their preferred nesting spots.

So on a way, we kind of owe them the barns. And the nest boxes. And the untouched old trees.

Sometime between now and November, consider putting up an owl nest box in your yard. By December, they'll start looking for adequate nesting sites, and your yard can be one of them.

07/27/2026

Your solid wooden fence is a wall for every toad, box turtle, and small snake trying to move through your neighborhood.

These animals navigate at ground level and either struggle to climb or simply can't. A solid fence turns your yard into a dead end. They follow the fence line looking for a way through, burning energy the whole time.

The fix is simple: cut or pull a few four-inch gaps at the base of the fence. That gap connects your yard to the landscape around it. The toad that was circling your fence can get in. The box turtle trying to reach the pond on the other side can get through. Cost: nothing. Time: ten minutes maybe.

If you have a chain-link fence, you're already ahead. Chain-link allows almost everything to pass through at ground level, which is one of its genuine ecological advantages over privacy fencing that nobody talks about. Ground beetles, toads, small snakes, and juvenile turtles move freely through it.

In the UK, wildlife gardeners call the wooden fence gap a hedgehog highway. The concept applies to everything that moves low and slow. Your yard stops being a box and becomes a corridor, and corridors are what wildlife actually needs in a fragmented landscape.