Home - Backwoods Home Magazine

Start a post-construction cleaning business

Build a cold smoker so you can make delicious squaw candy

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

Meat For the Homestead

By Jackie Clay-Atkinson Issue #137 • September/October, 2012 Meat is often the most expensive portion of our grocery bill, and it is getting more and more...

Green or Yellow: Grow Your Best Bush Beans Ever

Time to Forget About Snail and Slug Bait

Use Old Newspapers to Make Your Starter Pots

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

How safe is your electric fence?

The poor man’s ceramic knife sharpener

Build a cistern out of corrugated road culvert

Build a Trail

Self-Reliance

What to do when there’s no doctor

Your kitchen pharmacy — How common culinary herbs and spices can help you feel...

By Rebekah L. Cowell Issue #122 • March/April, 2010 In a perfect world, we would get all the nutrients and medication we needed from the food...

Space heater safety tips

By Tom Kovach Issue #90 • November/December, 2004 If you are going to try to take the chill out of your home without turning on your...

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

Avian Flu — How afraid of this

Gee-Whiz: Sleep

How big is the solar system?

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

Presidents’ wives of the past Part 3

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

Gee-Whiz: Presidents

From Martha and Abigail to Dolley and Louisa, America’s earliest First Ladies were fascinating

Firearms

A used shotgun bargain: The Browning Auto-5

How to shoot a handgun accurately

By Massad Ayoob Issue #85 • January/February, 2004 "I want you to do an article on how to shoot a handgun accurately," Dave Duffy told me....

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...

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...

Preparedness

Power-up bag

Medical kits for self-reliant families

Gee-Whiz: From Paper to Canning

Emergency planning beyond the bug-out bag

Help your home survive in the path of a wildfire

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...