Backwoods Home Magazine - Practical Self-Reliance

Your survival depends on water

Shearing, carding, spinning, weaving and creating with Margaret Boos

Finding, buying, milking, and living with the family milk cow

Homestead burnout — What it is and how to avoid it

Practical Ideas for Self-Reliant Living

Grow some winter squash this year

By Lisa Nourse I love summertime — I love the green of the trees, the warm weather, and growing my own food. I especially love...

Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought

Boost your immune system with fast and easy fish dishes

The Homestead Greenhouse

By Charles Sanders Issue #67 • January/February, 2001 For those of us living close to the land, the production of a dependable and healthful food supply...

Use Old Newspapers to Make Your Starter Pots

Garden Seeds — A Great Winter Pastime

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

Build a 6500-gallon concrete water tank for $1500

This coop is for the birds

Make a fully functional cold storage pit/mound and enjoy your garden’s production all winter

Shake update

Self-Reliance

Just for Kids: Sun-kabobs and solar sizzle

Sew a baby quilt in two days… for a lifetime of memories

By Ilene Duffy Issue #83 • September/October, 2003 During my last year of teaching school, I was pregnant with Jacob. I'll always remember receiving a beautifully...

Cold process goat milk soap

By Michele Cooper Issue #171 • May/June, 2018 Making soap can seem scary to some people, but the truth is, it only takes a few steps. Tools...

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: Dinosaurs

The gee-whiz! page — Cats: Why they rule our world

Subduction zone tsunami — What the residents of the Pacific Northwest have to fear

Gee-Whiz: Ice Ages, Past and Future

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

Who were the best…and worst U.S. Presidents?

Declaration of Independence: The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

The vanishing outhouse

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

Firearms

Savage Model 110 — A proven economical backwoods rifle

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...

Tailoring guns to females

By Massad Ayoob Issue #131 • September/October, 2011 So, I'm sitting here in a hotel writing this, less than three hours after getting off the witness...

Bury a gun and ammo for 15 years

(and be assured everything still works when you dig it up) By Charles Wood Issue #115 • January/February, 2009 Back in the early 1990s the outlook for the...

Preparedness

A survival key ring — Your everyday tool for emergency preparedness

Homestead security for women

Circle of friends

Commonsense preparedness just makes sense

Start a fire in any weather

Caring for wounds in the field

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...