Backwoods Home Magazine - Practical Self-Reliance

Drive your own freshwater well

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

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

Green or Yellow: Grow Your Best Bush Beans Ever

By Lisa LaFreniere Issue #62 • March/April, 2000 Bush Beans, or snap beans as they're sometimes referred to, are a growing favorite among many gardeners, and...

Swiss Chard — The Leaf Vegetable That Keeps on Giving!

Vermicomposting — Raise Worms to Consume Waste, Amend Soil, and Earn...

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

Shake update

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

Vise Dremel Moto Tool mount

Build a Heated Germination Bed

Self-Reliance

Survival storeroom

I heat my house by burning corn

By Judith W. Monroe Issue #42 • November/December, 1996 As I write this, it is fall in New England. If you burn wood, you are probably...

New yarn from old sweaters

By Margaret Mills Issue #132 • November/December, 2011 Years ago, when my grandmother learned that some women purchased new fabric to make quilts, she was shocked....

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

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

Gee-Whiz: Ice Ages, Past and Future

Gee-Whiz: Coffee

The MTHFR mutation and why it may matter to you

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

Grandpa’s justice

The vanishing outhouse

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

Farm baseball … with ghost runners!

Firearms

BHM hosts Appleseed marksmanship event

Centennial of the All-American .30-06

By Massad Ayoob Issue #100 • July/August, 2006 In the long love affair between America and the rifle, there has never been an interlude quite as...

Of guns and snakes

By Massad Ayoob Issue #151 • January/February, 2015 Mas safely kills a rattlesnake in a populated area. (Note angle of gun and trajectory.) Pistol is a...

Affordable firearms

By Massad Ayoob Issue #134 • March/April, 2012 Knowing that frugality is one of the cornerstones of rural living, Editor Annie Tuttle suggested that I tackle...

Preparedness

Survival storeroom

Disaster preparation!

The fire wick fire starter

Help your home survive in the path of a wildfire

7 Mistakes of food storage

The Five “P”s: A fire evacuation grab ‘n’ go kit

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...