Home - Backwoods Home Magazine

Adventures with a portable sawmill

Building and stocking your pantry

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

Propagating Grapes

By Sylvia Gist Issue #107 • September/October, 2007 As a kid in western South Dakota, I enjoyed picking wild grapes and using the delightful juice they...

Here’s a Mighty Creative Way to Protect Your Plants from Animals

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

Build a Concrete Root Cellar

The house that Dorothy built

Build a homestead Copy Cart

Build an Off-Grid Root Cellar, Garage, and Bunkhouse

Self-Reliance

Avoiding heat illness

Help your home survive in the path of a wildfire

By Brent Stainer These firefighters fought hard to save this house, but the best...

Sewing and using cloth diapers is easier than you think

By Annie Tuttle Issue #113 • September/October, 2008 I'll admit that it was the pastoral vision of a laundry line full of sun-bleached diapers above barefooted,...

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: Trees

The coming ice age

How big is the solar system?

The many benefits of garlic

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

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

Biological and chemical weapons through history

Emancipation Proclamation by Historical Document

Grandpa’s justice

Firearms

Firearms handling refresher Part II: Shotguns

Firearms and cold weather considerations

By Massad Ayoob Issue #79 • January/February, 2003 Many of our readers have established their abodes in places which, during the winter months, do not exactly...

Canning game meat

By Linda Gabris Issue #166 • July/August, 2017 Attempting to can meat (or any other low acid food, for that matter) without the use of a...

Understanding the gun debate, part 3

By Massad Ayoob Issue #163 • January/February, 2017 Click Here to read Part 1 Click Here to read Part 2 As noted in the two previous parts of...

Preparedness

Caring for wounds in the field

Frostbite — Don’t flirt with this sneaky danger

Oregon Trail preparedness: What supplies did the settlers carry?

Battery-Powered Tools are Changing

A survival key ring — Your everyday tool for emergency preparedness

Storm survivors

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...