Home - Backwoods Home Magazine

Kick the credit card habit and learn to stash cash

Preparing for a Temporary Catastrophe

Green or Yellow: Grow Your Best Bush Beans Ever

Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought

By John Silveira While we are waiting for the Coronavirus pandemic to subside enough so society can get back to normal, there are powerful and...

Grow some winter squash this year

Boost your immune system with fast and easy fish dishes

Solar-Powered Electric Fencing

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #147 • May/June, 2014 A new electric fence attached to older traditional wood fencing More and more people are turning to...

Clover — From Livestock Forage to Medicinal Tea, This Humble Plant...

Growing Productive Strawberries

Green or Yellow: Grow Your Best Bush Beans Ever

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

Here’s an Easier (and Cheaper) Way to Make Wooden Beams

How to Resurrect Old, Rusted Tools

A simple backwoods hay baler

Getting logs

Self-Reliance

A survival key ring — Your everyday tool for emergency preparedness

The joys of making soap

By Grace Brockway Issue #84 • November/December, 2003 My initial enthusiasm for making my own soap was deflating with each book I read on the subject....

Cold process goat milk soap

By Michele Cooper Issue #171 • May/June, 2018 Making soap can seem scary to some people, but the truth is, it only takes a few steps. Tools...

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

Gee-Whiz: Bad Fish, Big Fish

The ‘risks’ with Swine Flu

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

Gee-Whiz: Presidents

the gee-whiz! page: Animals, humans, extraterrestrials, and tools

President George Washington’s Farewell Address

Feeling nostalgic? Now you’ll rave! Here’s the story of Burma Shave.

Firearms

Frontier style handguns for the modern backwoods home

Tailoring guns to females

By Massad Ayoob Issue #131 • September/October, 2011 So, I'm sitting here in a hotel writing this, less than three hours after getting off the witness...

How big a gun do you need?

By Massad Ayoob Issue #99 • May/June, 2006 We Americans like to do things in a big way. Big houses. Big cars. Big boats. And, yes,...

Consider the 20-gauge shotgun

By Massad Ayoob Issue #120 • November/December, 2009 A year or more ago in these pages, I made the suggestion that sometimes less is more, and...

Preparedness

Solar-powered water purifiers

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

Emergency treatment for fire-related injuries

Prepper power! Part 1

What to do when there’s no doctor

Circle of friends

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...