Backwoods Home Magazine - Practical Self-Reliance

Use Plastic to Get a Head Start on Corn in the Fall

Doesn’t anyone remember Tom Paine

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...

Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought

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...

By Hook or Crook: A Billhook is a Handy Homestead Tool

Your Manure Pile — For Fuel, Fertilizer, and Maybe Even Improved...

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

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

Build a barrel stove

Shelves and benches

Build an Old-Fashioned Hotbed and Start Your Seeds in Style

Self-Reliance

Finding wealth you can wear at yard sales

Seventeen great tips for caring for windows, mirrors, and other household glass

By Sandy Lindsey Issue #43 • January/February, 1997 1 To make windows and mirrors sparkle, dip a clean cloth in a 50/50 mixture of borax and...

Make your own firestarters

By Claire Wolfe Issue #129 • May/June, 2011 I bought an old house last summer and inherited lots of the former owners' stuff some of...

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

The ‘risks’ with Swine Flu

Gee-Whiz: Ice Ages, Past and Future

Zombie Apocalypse

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

Farm baseball … with ghost runners!

The greatest American who was never President

Former first ladies — Beautiful, brilliant, crazy

Feeling nostalgic? Now you’ll rave! Here’s the story of Burma Shave.

Firearms

Bury a gun and ammo for 15 years

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...

An economical battery of guns for the backwoods home

By Massad Ayoob Issue #114 • November/December, 2008 Everything's getting more expensive. Food. Gasoline. Guns and ammunition. Not everyone who appreciates the rural lifestyle was "born...

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...

Preparedness

Survival firebuilding skills

Building and stocking your pantry

Battery-Powered Tools are Changing

Handy Keychain Mini-Gadgets

Circle of friends

Dollar Store to the Rescue

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...