Backwoods Home Magazine - Practical Self-Reliance

Nursing: A perfect backwoods career

Here’s an Easier (and Cheaper) Way to Make Wooden Beams

Tomatoes, the Essential Garden Crop

Practical Ideas for Self-Reliant Living

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

Testing Soil

By Tom Kovach Issue #119 • September/October, 2009 Testing the soil content of a garden is very important and is quite easy to do. Soil tests...

Garden Spaces for Small Places

Want More Fruit From Less Space? Espalier Your Trees!

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

New invention— The Fencerunner

Tools and hardware for the backwoods home

Turning a $10,000 House into a Home — Part 1: Salvaging the Wreck

Simplify life in your backwoods home by using these easy mountain methods

Self-Reliance

35 country jobs — How folks make a living near my hometown

Everybody talks about lightning and yes, there are things you can do about it

By Albert H. Carlson Issue #37 • January/February, 1996 What was a beautiful sunny day with large white billowing clouds low on the horizon has turned...

The adventures of a first-time homesteader

By Jessie Denning Issue #160 • July/August, 2016 In November of 2015, my husband and I moved onto our 50-acre parcel of land in a 28-foot...

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: Coffee

A brief history of health and medicine

How big is the solar system?

Gee-Whiz: Trees

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

Quilts — Masterpieces of the heart and windows into women’s history

George Washington Carver — He wrote the book on self-reliance

Habeeb Salloum — Poet, Traveler, Recipe Writer

Fly it proudly and properly

Firearms

Use the right ammunition!

Building the coyote rifle

By Rev. J.D. Hooker Issue #107 • September/October, 2007 Feral dogs, coyotes, and those odd-looking "coy dogs" like to feed on my neighbors' livestock on occasion...

The Appleseed Project

By Massad Ayoob Issue #123 • May/June, 2010 There is nothing else in the shooting world quite like the Appleseed Project, which combines American Revolutionary War...

Women and guns

By Massad Ayoob Issue #121 • January/February, 2010 In a time when what used to be called "the women's liberation movement" has achieved many of its...

Preparedness

Survival firebuilding skills

Build a community assistance recharging station

Oregon Trail preparedness: What supplies did the settlers carry?

7 Mistakes of food storage

Solar-powered water purifiers

Bartering for bad times

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...