Jackie Clay has been a homesteader all her adult life, striving toward a self-reliant lifestyle. Also an author of many books, including Growing And Canning Your Own Food, Jackie Clay’s Pantry Cookbook, and Homesteading Simplified, she has 
written for many national magazines. She regularly writes in Backwoods Home Magazine, doing articles on self-reliant living and a question-and-answer column entitled “Ask Jackie” in each issue.
She and her husband, Will, homestead a 120-acre piece of northern Minnesotan woods, raising at least 80% of their own food. Sharing their homestead are horses, beef cattle, a milk cow, dairy goats, chickens and turkeys.