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!

He's a noisy little guy, but if this isn't one of theee best sounds of summer, I don't know what is! Talk about a sound ...
05/26/2026

He's a noisy little guy, but if this isn't one of theee best sounds of summer, I don't know what is! Talk about a sound that takes you right back to being a kid!
The cicada is back, just chillin' on a peony bush! I low-key envy his life of screaming all day and hanging out in the flowers!🌸

Rainy days and sundays never get me down, because there's so much deliciousness to be had, making magic in the kitchen! ...
05/24/2026

Rainy days and sundays never get me down, because there's so much deliciousness to be had, making magic in the kitchen!

I bought another bulk amount of strawberries, and after making jam and dehydrating and doing all the usual things, I have alot of "scrap" parts left over.

Only that ain't scrap, y'all! You can "food upcycle" so much more than you think! Groceries are expensive. Get every bang for your buck that you can!
Those decapitated heads of the strawberries have a ton of flavor in them, and can be used to make strawberry syrup, which can also be canned for long-term storage.

Throw the strawberry tops in water and sugar, boil and simmer down, strain with cheesecloth and can it up! I water bath can because I'm a rebel canner, but you can pressure can it as well. If you don't can, just keep your jars of syrup in the fridge and use within the next month or so. It'll appear watery in the jar at first, but it thickens up to a pancake syrup-like consistency in the fridge.

You can use strawberry syrup on waffles, on top of cake or ice cream, stirred into hot or cold tea...the uses are endless. Sweet and strawberry-y!

We've been hustlin' here on the homestead! Not a whole, whole lot of updates yet so soon in the growing season buuuut ou...
05/22/2026

We've been hustlin' here on the homestead!

Not a whole, whole lot of updates yet so soon in the growing season buuuut our flock of 30 tomato plants made it through the cold snap, like the little vikings they are. ( A flock of tomatoes is a thing, right?)
And the army of celery soldiers are growing better than I've ever been able to grow them from seed before, so the stage they're at now is a personal best for me. New high score!

What's growing in your gardens right now?

Sometimes there's so much pressure to grow everything from scratch and cook everything from scratch and live every secon...
05/09/2026

Sometimes there's so much pressure to grow everything from scratch and cook everything from scratch and live every second of your day from scratch and if you *don't* live like that then you're not part of some super elite club of the super cool kids.

Well that's garbage.

While "from scratch" is what to aim for, sometimes you just gotta go store-bought or do the shortcut or do the thing that makes your life a little less crazy-making. And there ain't nothin' wrong with that.

Case in point: I can't grow strawberries to save my life. It may be the only thing I suck at growing and believe me, I am SALTY about it. But I want all the strawberries. ALL of them. To make ALL the things. I want to drown in strawberries.

So, I buy them in bulk locally from a farm that gets them from the Amish. I'm supporting a local farmer who's supporting a less local but still another Pennsylvania farmer. I'm totally fine with that setup.

One of my favorite ways of storing them is dehydrating sliced strawberries. They store for about a million years in an airtight glass jar. I like to drop a handful of crispy strawberry slices in a bowl of bran cereal with homemade almond milk. And yes, I've fully accepted the fact that it's an old lady thing to eat and I'm totally fine with that too. 🍓

We're still on the chilly side here in Pennsylvania, but that doesn't stop the rhubarb from rhubarbing! I just started p...
05/07/2026

We're still on the chilly side here in Pennsylvania, but that doesn't stop the rhubarb from rhubarbing!

I just started pulling some stalks to be dessert-ified. Rhubarb tarts just may be the thing to make this weekend, because as always I'm feeling entirely too fancy and bougie.

Quick lesson time: Rhubarb stalks aren't always uniformly solid red or hot pink. Sometimes they're light limey green colored or pale-ish yellow mixed in with pink. Who knows why they're all differently-hued, it's just weird plant science. But they all taste exactly the same, so enjoy all the colors.

Also, rhubarb is an old-timey staple! It comes back bigger and better every year and is happy to be left the heck alone and ignored in the garden somewhere (relatable), so it's a MUST in our "apocalypse garden!"

We no longer use these flavored syrups like we used to, but I also cannot justify throwing out usable and save-able food...
05/05/2026

We no longer use these flavored syrups like we used to, but I also cannot justify throwing out usable and save-able food either. Especially food that essentially never goes bad. Because there may come a day where it comes in handy or I need to use it! So to the back of the pantry it goes to hibernate.

But, shoot.

I tossed the caps eons ago. Now I *cooould* have just bought replacement caps. But where's the fun in that? Also, ain't nobody got time to spend money on dumb stuff when you can McGyver your way through a problem.

Turns out, soda bottle caps fit the standard 25 oz. bottles perfectly! Amazing. I love when that happens.

So not only did I recycle the Pepsi Zero bottle it came from, I upcycled its cap for months to come. Maybe years. It's one more day out of the landfill, at the very least. Frugal and fabulous.

Is it groundbreaking? Is it newsworthy? Is it special? Not at all. But small wins are still wins.

I've discovered that every year, our humble little homestead property grows something new out of left field that is edib...
05/01/2026

I've discovered that every year, our humble little homestead property grows something new out of left field that is edible that I DEFINITELY did not plant but has showed up on its own. Plant magic!

It's actually been ridiculously exciting waiting to see what shows up every year, like a scavenger hunt in my own backyard. Aaaand now I've entered the nerdy stage of life where you geek out over w**ds. And not the "recreational" ones.

So in another episode of "I didn't plant this! Rude. But wait, I love it!", I present to you the humble Buglew**d. How'd it get here? I don't know. I ask myself the same question often.

Buglew**d. Hideous name. But generally speaking, if "w**d" is in a flower name, chances are it's gonna be edible, medicinal or awesome in some way. And Buglew**d checks all those boxes.

1. It's a ground cover and spread like crazy. Plant it if you want gorge purple flowers everywhere! And who doesn't?
2. It loves trash soil. Dry, rocky dirt? It says hell yeah!
3. While it is edible, it can tend to get bitter. Relatable.
4. Medicinally speaking, that's where the money 's at. It's been used to treat hyperthyroidism, bronchitis, coughs, cardiovascular support and more!

(ALWAYS check with your doctor first to see about how it reacts to your health and medication, and do lots of googling research yourself on it.)

**d **ds

Our little homestead is getting even more botanically-diverse! (Is that a phrase? It seems like it is. Does it make me s...
04/29/2026

Our little homestead is getting even more botanically-diverse! (Is that a phrase? It seems like it is. Does it make me sound clever, like I know what I'm talking about? Well anyway.)

Here's a sneaky-sneaks peek into a new project that I DEFINITELY shouldn't be starting now and know virtually nothing about and am just absolutely winging it out here. So basically it's just another Wednesday.

Address

Bangor, PA

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Birch & Bramble Homestead posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share