Home - Backwoods Home Magazine

Funerals don’t have to be expensive

A recycled dresser makes a useful bathroom vanity

Raising cattle on your own place

Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought

By John Silveira While we are waiting for the Coronavirus pandemic to subside enough so society can get back to normal, there are powerful and...

Boost your immune system with fast and easy fish dishes

Grow some winter squash this year

Plant Your Irish Potatoes This Fall or Winter

By Robert L. Williams Issue #48 • November/December, 1997 My family has made a practice of planting Irish potatoes in the fall rather than in the...

Here’s a Mighty Creative Way to Protect Your Plants from Animals

For Extra Production, Try Mound Gardening

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

Vise Dremel Moto Tool mount

Build your own portable forge

Build a ski sled

Build a Vertical Storage Rack for Cans

Self-Reliance

Pump water for free

Advice from second-time homesteaders

By Don and Patrice Lewis In 1993, shortly after we got married, my husband and I took a leap into the unknown. We left urban...

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

By Eugene Mitchell Issue #130 • July/August, 2011 Whether young or old, lying in the grass and searching for four-leafed clovers is timeless fun. Sometimes they're...

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

Theories of the universe

Gee-Whiz: Presidents

Gee-Whiz: From Paper to Canning

Gee-Whiz: Time

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

Habeeb Salloum — Poet, Traveler, Recipe Writer

Was the first government gun confiscation attempt foiled by an unsung colonial heroine?

Presidents’ wives of the past Part 4 — Cunning, vindictive, and one may have been a murderess

The vanishing outhouse

Firearms

Teaching a 10-year-old to shoot

Firearms handling refresher Part III: Rifles

By Massad Ayoob Website Exclusive • January, 2004 Our three part series on firearms handling ends with this installment. In Part I, we covered handguns and...

The time for modern; the time for traditional

By Massad Ayoob Issue #137 • September/October, 2012 Traditional "old skool" guns, or the most modern and efficient ballistic hardware that money can buy? I asked...

Moderate power firearms

By Massad Ayoob Issue #110 • March/April, 2008 Robert Ruark, the great American writer of the mid-Twentieth Century, was also a big game hunter. One of...

Preparedness

7 Mistakes of food storage

Frostbite — Don’t flirt with this sneaky danger

Preparing for civil unrest

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

Handy Keychain Mini-Gadgets

Help your home survive in the path of a wildfire

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...