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!

Growing strawberries has never been my specialty, in fact I suck at it. So last year I pulled up all the strawberry plan...
06/06/2026

Growing strawberries has never been my specialty, in fact I suck at it. So last year I pulled up all the strawberry plants, tossed them aside and gave up, vowing to never try to grow the jerks again.

So what do I find today, happily growing amongst the weeds? Those damn strawberry plants. And they're even growing big, red strawberries. The AUDACITY. After all the water and compost and attention I gave them, they never grew. Yet, through the drought and being tossed to a dry dusty corner and gettting absolute zero attention from me, they're like HEYYYY Y'ALL, GUESS WHO'S BACK?!

And while I can go on about resilience and mother nature and yada yada yada, I really just appreciate the strawberries' absolute gangster level of pettiness.

Strawberry season is just about here my friendos, and this is your frugal and fabulous reminder to save those strawberry...
06/04/2026

Strawberry season is just about here my friendos, and this is your frugal and fabulous reminder to save those strawberry tops!

After you've decapitated the strawberry heads, throw 'em in a jar of vinegar for a few days to make the most delicious, most gorge-looking, flavored vinegar you've ever had.
It doesn't even matter what type of vinegar. 'Spensive, health food store apple cider vinegar? Throw it in. Balsamic vinegar you stole from your mother-in-law's kitchen? Throw it in. Cheap ass, dollar store white vinegar? Throw. That. S**z. In.

And because we fancy-fancy, it's so stupidly bougie-appearing that you'll impress your friends that you don't like when you whip out a bottle of your own berry-marinated vinegar. Make sure to put on a very dramatic act, like it took you SOOO VERRRY LONG to make it, when in actuality it took 7 seconds. But they don't need to know that!

Groceries are expensive. Squeeze every last dieing breath out of your pennies. Like I always say, we're gonna ride it 'til the wheels fall off!

In the moments between tending to the major garden, we make allll the edible flower jellies.We've already done dandelion...
06/03/2026

In the moments between tending to the major garden, we make allll the edible flower jellies.
We've already done dandelion and lilac jellies, but like a knucklehead I forgot to take pics but today I remembered the peonies! Peony flowers come in all colors, so the prettier the flower color, the prettier the jelly color will be.

A bit of a bummer is that every peony bush here on the homestead grows white and very pale yellow flowers. Basic as heck. But the peonies were already here and well-established when we bought the house so I'm using what we have because it's free! And I'll always advocate for "use what you have" instead of buying new!
So boring, yellowish jelly is what we got. Lame color, amazing taste! Smells like peonies but tastes sweet.

Like any flower jelly, all the petals must be pulled and soaked in boiling water. No green parts, no stems or leaves. I let the bowl of soaking flowers sit overnight, then strain over cheesecloth and process the flower water into jelly.

Flower jellies are among my favorite jellies to make because cracking open a jar in the middle of a winter blizzard is like getting a little taste of summer!

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!"

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