The Birch & Bramble Homestead

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The Birch & Bramble Homestead Living a large-scale homesteading life on small-scale acreage. We're doing alot with a little!

From canning, dehydrating, gardening, edible flowers, foraging, hillbilly-engineering, old-timey folk remedies, upcycling, and to making frugal fabulous!

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10/15/2026

🖤🖤🖤🍁🍁🍁🌿🌿🌿

Why our in-ground chives are still growing like crazy, I have no idea...but I sure as heck am gonna dehydrate these suck...
10/10/2026

Why our in-ground chives are still growing like crazy, I have no idea...but I sure as heck am gonna dehydrate these suckers! No food waste here!

What's still oddly growing for all of you?

After a long, hot, humid, wet and bipolar summer, October is finally here! I try not to rush the days, weeks and months ...
10/01/2026

After a long, hot, humid, wet and bipolar summer, October is finally here!

I try not to rush the days, weeks and months because every day is one less day we have on this earth and time is speeding up the older we get. That's uplifting and not at all grim, right? What I mean is I'm always reminding myself to just enjoy the day, the weather or the season. Time is precious and fleeting, so don't be a salty heifer and just enjoy and appreciate it all while you can.

Here's one of my favorite backyard trees, a sugar maple doing her leaf-changing thing weirdly on just one side. 🍁

This is your autumnal reminder not to hack down your crusty and crunchy ol' dead flowers! While they may look like a dum...
09/24/2026

This is your autumnal reminder not to hack down your crusty and crunchy ol' dead flowers!

While they may look like a dumpster fire, your clumps of dried out, brown flowers will feed and house all manner of pollinators and small animals literally all winter long.

Goldfinches lose their dang minds eating the seeds on my clumps of dead echinacea flowers, so I won't cut them (or any other flowers or bushes) down until April, leaving them to have at their seed smorgasbord!

Birds like cardinals, chickadees, sparrows and mouring doves exist almost entirely on seeds and ornamental grasses, so your fugly flowers will keep them fed for the next 6 months or so. And that's kind of a big deal. 🖤

Hey there, friendos! It's been a hot minute since I've been able to post. Hard-core gardening, the start of canning seas...
09/22/2026

Hey there, friendos! It's been a hot minute since I've been able to post. Hard-core gardening, the start of canning season, end of summer nonsense, yada yada yada. So just an update on what's happening in the garden.

Our pride and joy every year is the zucchino rampicante. This year's longest one measures almost 4 feet long. If you pick them early when they're lime green, they taste like zucchini or summer squash. But we don't do that here. Because the longer you leave them hanging on the trellis, the sweeter they get! They're absolutely ridiculous and I love them for that.

The seedless concord grapevines we planted this year are doing mahhhvelously. A couple more years to grow and do their thang before we can (hopefully) harvest grapes. I love how the leaves wrap around the trellis like they're holding on for dear life.

The yellow flowers are sunchokes and are now approaching 12 feet tall. But like everything else around here, we don't grow them for their pretty flowers! Their underground tubers are where the magic happens. Come winter, we'll dig up the tubers for eating. The tubers are shaped like ginger but taste like a slightly nutty potato and are SO delicious roasted! Also, the more I say "tubers" the more ridiculous it sounds.

The rhubarb, oy. Why is it still growing like a madman? Don't they know I'm sick of them? I do appreciate that kind of spiteful willfullness. I guess I'll just keep harvesting it and freezing it. Winter rhubarb tarts are never a bad thing! So, fiiine. Keep growing then, ya jerks.

More updates soon! But in the meantime, how are all of your gardens doing now?

09/08/2026

Those ugly ol' dill stems are packed with flavor! Use them in your jars of homemade pickles!


Not to toot my own horn, but honk honk, baby. This was the year I perfected the BEST garlic dill pickles in the known un...
09/08/2026

Not to toot my own horn, but honk honk, baby. This was the year I perfected the BEST garlic dill pickles in the known universe, probably.

It all starts with our garden-grown pickling cucumbers, garlic cloves and dill. While the garden is starting its slow-death knell, the cucumbers are still growing, so more jars will be cranked out soon.

But we ran out of dang dill.
Literally, every last sprig and flower of dill has been used. All that's left is this hideous stump of stems. Now what?
Well I'm about to get all frugal and fabulous and save the day!

Those long, bamboo-like stems left in the pot can be used in making pickles! While they appear to be dried out and fugly as sin, they're actually still loaded with super potent, fragrant, dilly oils!

While shoving a bunch of stem pieces in the jars won't be all gorgeous and aesthetic looking, the pickles will become infused with dill flavor/scent. No food waste here!

So don't trash that fugly dill plant! Save the Stems! (I should put that on a tee shirt.)

When she's a 10 but has a split personality. She's grotesque. She's a monster.She's gonna make kickass tomato sauce. Thi...
08/31/2026

When she's a 10 but has a split personality.

She's grotesque.
She's a monster.
She's gonna make kickass tomato sauce.

This is one tomato, in all her 2 pound glory! I wish I could say I have magic growing powers and all shall fear and love me! I wish I could take credit for her being an absolute unit! Sadly, I cannot. Sometimes, you just get randomly lucky with a behemoth in the garden.

(I'm probably still gonna act like I *totally* grew this on purpose, though.)

Having a weird summer, garden-wise? Too much sun, too much heat, too much rain? I got you, friends. If your tomatoes are...
08/16/2026

Having a weird summer, garden-wise? Too much sun, too much heat, too much rain? I got you, friends.

If your tomatoes aren't turning red fast enough on their stems, it's all good! The second they get get a little pink blush on them, called the breaking stage, pick them! It'll freak you out to pick unripe tomatoes, but I got a plan, Stan.

Once they're showing the teeniest bit of color, you can finish ripening them inside your house. In a cardboard box or in a paper bag. Throw those green jerks in. Add a whole apple. Something sciencey about gasses emited by the apple that ripens tomatoes. Wait a day or 2 and like magic they turn red!

I use a VERY chic, 2-step process. Step 1: when they're still pretty green, they go in a printer paper cardboard box with a lid. SO bougie. Step 2: the ones that turn red first get transferred to a smaller, USPS shipping box to finish the red-ification. It may be too glamorous for you. Do you need 2 boxes? No. But if you're fancy, you do.

That's it. A box (or paper bag, if you're a peasant), an apple and a few days until red tomatoes!

Gardening Things I Wish I Knew Years Ago, Part 4 Billion: Planting flowers around the garden perimeters! Gardening and ...
08/13/2026

Gardening Things I Wish I Knew Years Ago, Part 4 Billion: Planting flowers around the garden perimeters!

Gardening and growing food is a never-ending learning process, I get that. Still, I wish I knew all the things, all at once. I want to know *everything*, NOW. Is that too much to ask? But as I always say, better late than never.

When we first started our main garden here, it began as a simple rectangular area. Then it expanded. Then a fence went around it. Then a homemade garden gate. Then we learned about the power of manure. Then about w**d control. And on and on.

But the 1 "hack" that has proven to be more important than we ever realised is how vital it is to draw all the pollinators to your vegetable garden if you're growing anything that flowers: squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc. Without your pollinator buddies, your plants won't grow the vegetable. Simple, yet so overlooked!

So a few years ago I started roughly 20 billion echinacea and milkw**d seeds, then planted big chunks of them all around the garden. It's bee and butterfly city here, and the vegetables have never been more prolific!

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Bangor, PA

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