Backwoods Home Magazine - Practical Self-Reliance

How to butcher a chicken in 20 minutes or less

Garden Spaces for Small Places

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...

Boost your immune system with fast and easy fish dishes

Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought

The Potato Hole

By Sylvia Gist Issue #137 • September/October, 2012 Carrots go in sand in the green pail and potatoes can be sorted by type into plastic mesh...

Caring for your chickens in winter

Use Non-Hybrid Seeds and Save Big Bucks in This Year’s Garden

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 chicken tractor

A house a tornado helped build

The poor man’s ceramic knife sharpener

Livestock fencing for the small homesteader

Self-Reliance

Water development for the homestead: Ponds, cisterns, and tanks

Homestead burnout — What it is and how to avoid it

By Jackie Clay-Atkinson Issue #134 • March/April, 2012 We've all been there: the roof is leaking on your temporary housing while you try to build a...

Food security 101: part 2

By Rowena Aldridge Issue #139 • January/February, 2013 Last issue we talked about some things you can do to stretch your food...

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: Time

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

The world is coming to an end… and this time, I’m not kidding

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

Catfish Biscuits

Quilts — Masterpieces of the heart and windows into women’s history

Gee-Whiz: Presidents

Emancipation Proclamation by Historical Document

Firearms

Inexpensive retired Russian military rifles can be the ideal backwoods meat guns

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...

Hiding a gun — The rules of three

By Claire Wolfe Issue #140 • March/April, 2013 My friend Jack pulled the car into a grassy clearing. We donned rubber boots, fetched a metal detector...

How long should your gun’s barrel length be?

By Massad Ayoob Issue #136 • July/August, 2012 The person new to guns is like the person new to timepieces. "How many of these things are...

Preparedness

Caring for wounds in the field

Survival infection control

Avoiding heat illness

The return of home emergency shelters takes on a dual-purpose approach

Why you need to addsolar to your emergencypower backup plans

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...