Home - Backwoods Home Magazine

Build a Vertical Storage Rack for Cans

Caring for wounds in the field

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...

Grow some winter squash this year

Boost your immune system with fast and easy fish dishes

Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought

Hügelkultur for the Homestead

By Rose Shelton Issue #176 • April/May/June, 2019 Last spring, I finally completed a long-planned homestead project of constructing two hügelkultur beds. What is hügelkultur? It’s...

Seven tactics for planning next year’s garden

Leafy Green Vegetables — The Underrated Heroes of the Garden

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

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

Installing a steel roof

Building Eric’s house

Getting logs

Build a portable woodstove for $30

Self-Reliance

Food security 101, part 3: Why I love my vacuum sealer (and more)

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...

Start a fire in any weather

By Charles Sanders Issue #161 • September/October, 2016 Most of us living in the backwoods are comfortable with utilizing fire as a tool. We use fire...

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

How big is the solar system?

Avian Flu — How afraid of this

Gee-Whiz: Ice Ages, Past and Future

Science and truth. Are they related?

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

Who were the best…and worst U.S. Presidents?

Farm baseball … with ghost runners!

The summer of ’35

The barnyard scramble

Firearms

Sight and sound enhancement

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...

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

By Rev. J.D. Hooker Issue #47 • September/October, 1997 Like many another rural person, I've often found a firearm to be my most important tool. No,...

Frontier style handguns for the modern backwoods home

By Massad Ayoob Issue #101 • September/October, 2006 The year was 1873. Samuel Colt had invented the revolveror at least introduced it to Americain 1836. The...

Preparedness

Survival storeroom

With commonsense planning, you can survive hard times

Dollar Store to the Rescue

The fire wick fire starter

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

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...