Backwoods Home Magazine - Practical Self-Reliance

For summertime baking needs, build yourself an outdoor horno

Boost your immune system with fast and easy fish dishes

By Linda Gabris When I was growing up in the rural woods, Grandpa and I did a lot of fishing from spring through fall so...

Grow some winter squash this year

Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought

A Child’s Garden — More than Child’s Play

By Jackie Clay Issue #69 • May/June, 2001 There are many things parents can give their children, other than plastic toys or a few bucks to...

Grow Garlic and Reap Health Benefits

Clover — From Livestock Forage to Medicinal Tea, This Humble Plant...

Green or Yellow: Grow Your Best Bush Beans Ever

Follow Jackie Clay-Atkinson and her husband, Will, as they homestead a 120-acre piece of northern Minnesotan woods entirely off-grid. Sharing their homestead are horses, beef cattle, a milk cow, dairy goats, chickens and turkeys.

Massad Ayoob on Guns

This blog, from a retired police captain and self-defense instructor, covers the use of different firearms, political musings, and self-defense tactics.

Building

Shelves and benches

Make your own lumber with a chainsaw mill

Build a Trapper’s Tilt

Making and using a solar cooker

Self-Reliance

How we found our remote backwoods home

Saving money on the homestead

By Jackie Clay-Atkinson Issue #148 • July/August, 2014 I come from a "penny-pinching-and-proud-of-it" family background and I learned the importance of saving a buck at an...

Step onto the ice and catch tonight’s dinner

By Jim Capossela During open water season, the dedicated fisherman dreams of a trophy gamefish to hang in the fishing camp, or, increasingly, to...

Animals

The homestead cat

By Jackie Clay-Atkinson We have had at least one cat in our home ever since I was a young child. So it’s no wonder we...

Cheaper than Store-Bought Eggs

Raising your own beef

Fermenting Chicken Feed

Keeping homestead animals healthy

Science and Education

Gee-Whiz: Insects

Three more ways the world can end … and I’m not kidding

The MTHFR mutation and why it may matter to you

Theories of the universe

Energy

Solar power for farm and ranch

By Jeffrey R. Yago, P.E. It may be surprising to learn that there are now all kinds of do-it-yourself solar powered devices specifically designed to...

Power-up bag

Amateur Ham Radio – The Ultimate Tool for Survival Communications

Keep the Ice On

Power Up

Americana and History

Fried chicken for breakfast

the gee-whiz! page: Animals, humans, extraterrestrials, and tools

President George Washington’s Farewell Address

The summer of ’35

Firearms

Consider the 20-gauge shotgun

Hiding a gun — The rules of three

By Claire Wolfe Issue #140 • March/April, 2013 My friend Jack pulled the car into a grassy clearing. We donned rubber boots, fetched a metal detector...

BHM hosts Appleseed marksmanship event

By Massad Ayoob Issue #139 • January/February, 2013 Long a supporter of the Appleseed concept, Backwoods Home Magazine hosted one in Gold Beach, Oregon, in second...

Catch your own bait

By Gary Gresh Issue #91 • January/February, 2005 Expensive lures and pricey tackle shop baits can sometimes make fishing an expensive proposition, raising the cost of...

Preparedness

Power Up

Food security 101, part 3: Why I love my vacuum sealer (and more)

Prepper power! Part 1

Food security 101: part 2

Bugging out in place

Building and stocking your pantry

Articles By Dave Duffy

My View: Call Me Miracle Man!

By Dave Duffy Issue #177 • July/August/September, 2019 Superheroes are the rage these days at movie theaters. Even I am fascinated by them. Old style heroes...