Backwoods Home Magazine - Practical Self-Reliance

Gabion walls for form and function

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

Grandma will love this personal ‘Helping Hands’ wall hanging

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

Gardening Tips and Tricks

By Charles Sanders Issue #99 • May/June, 2006 Gardeners are an ingenious lot. Trial and error, time, study, observation, and experience all help us to come...

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 Trapper’s Tilt

Build a compost tumbler

Gabion walls for form and function

How to Resurrect Old, Rusted Tools

Self-Reliance

Space heater safety tips

Cast iron

By Jackie Clay Issue #118 • July/August, 2009 My very favorite cookware is old. Some of it very old. It's nonstick, is equally at home in...

Getting logs

By Dorothy Ainsworth Website Exclusive • March, 2004 Online Exclusive April 2003 Attention: Would-be loggers. There have been changes in policy at the United States Forest Service...

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

Theories of the universe

Gee-Whiz: Time

Can we make a Tyrannosaurus rex from a chicken?

The ‘risks’ with Swine Flu

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

James Polk — A model for modern presidents

George Washington Carver — He wrote the book on self-reliance

Biological and chemical weapons through history

Former first ladies — Beautiful, brilliant, crazy

Firearms

Big boomer guns

Thoughts on ammunition

By Massad Ayoob Issue #108 • November/December, 2007 Ammunition is to firearms as gasoline is to automobiles. However, with guns and ammo, the fit isn't quite...

Choose your ammo… police style

By Massad Ayoob Issue #93 • May/June, 2005 One of our greatest modern gun experts, Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC, Ret., once made the observation that...

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

Protein — The Cornerstone of a Survival Diet

What to do when there’s no doctor

Bugging out in place

Build a community assistance recharging station

Oregon Trail preparedness: What supplies did the settlers carry?

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...