The Birch & Bramble Homestead

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!

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!

Back in May I lamented about not growing celery well from seed. Oh, the shame. This is my 3rd year of stubbornly trying,...
08/07/2026

Back in May I lamented about not growing celery well from seed. Oh, the shame. This is my 3rd year of stubbornly trying, and my friendos...this is the year I cracked the code and kicked it's butt.

This is a European heirloom variety called Amsterdam celery, because we're out here being all bougie as heck.

Now this ain't your mama's celery. It's not a watery, stringy, flavorless dumpster fire like most celery from the store. No, this baby has razzmatazz.

Amsterdam celery grows long, skinny and leafy, with stalks no thicker than a pencil. It's grown really for its leaves and its super potent, concentrated celery flavor. It's a winner!

I've spent the past 2 days dehydrating it, because I'm obsessed with throwing dehydrated celery into soups, rice, and dips. Winter is gonna be fun! (If you think cooking with veg you grew in your garden and then preserved as "fun".)

Did you ever wonder why elderberry products at farmstands and farmers markets cost as much as buying a brand new Chevy C...
08/04/2026

Did you ever wonder why elderberry products at farmstands and farmers markets cost as much as buying a brand new Chevy Cavalier in 1985?
You know I'm gonna call out scammy prices and things not worth buying when I see them, but this time ain't it, sis. Homemade elderberry products are worth the price! And here's why...

Elderberries are a "one and done" crop, meaning once you pick them, they don't grow back again that season. Limited time offer. Every cluster of berries grows as a "head", and every head needs to be cut off. Literally. It's also a battle with the jerk birds and deer, who all love to snack on these bushes. I'm always for sharing with the birds and beasts, but back off the elderberries. They're worth a fortune! Sort of.

Once you have your berry cluster heads cut off the bushes, they need to be frozen. It's the easiest way to get every single teeny berry off their stems. "Time consuming work" doesn't even begin to describe it. But "annoying as heck" certainly does!

When they're all picked, you're left with a pile of stems that look like something out of Stranger Things. But that's not the end! You have to go through the bowl of berries to pick out the leftover bits of stem and remove any nasty green berries.

Alot of work for a little amount of berries.

So you freeze the berries you have in a ziploc and repeat that process over and over and over until you have enough berries to make a batch of something with. Jams, syrups, wine, whatever.

Like Billy Crystal said in Analyze This: "It's a process."

The next time you're out and about and see *anything* made with elderberries for sale for a high price, you'll know all the love, time and swearing that went into it!

Have you ever seen teenie-weenie swallowtail butterfly babies? I almost always miss seeing them in this stage so I thoug...
07/27/2026

Have you ever seen teenie-weenie swallowtail butterfly babies? I almost always miss seeing them in this stage so I thought I'd share in case you did too!

These particular little dudes are chilling on my dill plants that surround my main vegetable garden. Bees get all the glory but Swallowtails are just as excellent and important pollinators, making them important to hang out in the garden--especially if you're growing veggies that flower and need pollination (tomatoes, squash, etc.)

Swallowtail butterflies started showing up in my yard after my dad died some years ago, so I like to think that whenever I see one flitting around, it's my dad checking in and saying "keep on truckin'!" đź–¤

Every year we plant at least 1 new-to-us, weird (or at the very least, weird-adjacent) veggie. It's been a hilarious exp...
07/22/2026

Every year we plant at least 1 new-to-us, weird (or at the very least, weird-adjacent) veggie. It's been a hilarious experimental tradition for us so far! Most of the time our expectations were blown away, but sometimes you just get a lame-o dud. It's like dating, only less soul-crushing.

This year's test wasn't as odd as our usual finds. In fact, it's a little basic. The name was hella cool so I assumed it'd knock my socks off! But these socks are still on.

It is the Dragon Tongue bean.
Awesome name, but boring as heck.

Honest Review time- they're not bad. They're just bland. Average. Generic. And 3 things I don't love is bland, average and generic! They look cool with their purple and lime green streaks, but taste like literally any other green bean you've ever eaten. Ho hum.

I'll stick to a tried-and-true standard bush bean in the future, and wouldn't waste the space to plant these again, unless I was going for cool aesthetic value alone. But if anyone had a better time with them, I wanna hear about it!

It's second harvest time for the rhubarb plants and boyyyy are they fugly this time around!But you know what? The fuglie...
07/13/2026

It's second harvest time for the rhubarb plants and boyyyy are they fugly this time around!

But you know what? The fuglies taste just as good as the hotties! Sure, the hottie plants don't look like dumpster fires with ratchet, bug-chomp holes in the leaves.
It doesn't matter! Pick the ugly ones. Use those hatchet-faces up! They'll love you even more than the pretty ones will.

This time around I'm not making rhubarb jam, tarts or syrup. Today I'm going the easy route, because its hot and I'm probably as sick of dealing with the rhubarb and they are of me.
I'm simply hacking them up, laying them in a single (ish) layer on a cookie sheet and freezing. After they're frozen solid I vacuum seal them in bags and off they go, back into their deep-freeze prison until I'm done being sick to death of looking at them and eventually will get thrown in with strawberries for jam, or whatevertheheck. If you have any ideas for using frozen rhubarb, toss 'em my way!

Just me over here, being all glamorous, mending a ripped, old rug. The paparazzi have been notified. Try not to be too j...
07/09/2026

Just me over here, being all glamorous, mending a ripped, old rug. The paparazzi have been notified. Try not to be too jealous.

As often as the "homesteading influencers" make it appear as though this lifestyle is pretty and sparkly and everyone is obviously wealthy, real homesteading is work and sweat and mess and neverending jobs that are neverending.

Most of it is fairly mundane and unaesthetic, like sewing a torn rug. Those boujie influencers would simply buy a new one.
But not us! Nay! For we are the Frugal and Fabulous! Everything gets repaired, resewn, or even just hillbilly-engineered by slapping duct tape on it and calling it a day. Also, buying a new rug? In this economy? Absofreakinglutely not.

But today's boring ol' task comes with a serving of nostalgia because I get to break out my vintage wooden, thread spool rack from the 1960's or 70's, which was given to me by my favorite, late aunt. She was the queen of the 1940's ethos of "Make Do and Mend" and I'm doing exactly that. Figuratively and literally.

How can sewing a boring old rug be a chore, when it comes with good memories? I feel richer than all the sparkly influencers combined.

We own what would be considered a very small amount of land when compared to other homesteads of many, many acres. I am ...
07/03/2026

We own what would be considered a very small amount of land when compared to other homesteads of many, many acres. I am unabashedly proud and grateful for our little slice of heaven, especially when so many people don't have the ability to own any amount whatsoever.

But I wanna live BIG on my little! Part of "makin' it work!" means using every last square of space, every last empty container, every last corner. You gotta get creative with the space!

So a few years ago the charming, oh-so-very English garden-style flowers that were growing in these copper windowboxes got the ol' heave-ho and replaced with salad greens one year, scallions another year and basil this year. These windowboxes are huge and are pumping out more basil than I can keep up with. The best problem to have!

It may not be as "Instagram worthy" as stunning flowers, or as showy as the homesteads with rolling fields, but the fact that I have a great new space to grow food for us is pretty dang spectacular.

No matter how "little" you have, there's always a way to have alot! More than you can imagine.

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Bangor, PA

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