Home - Backwoods Home Magazine

For summertime baking needs, build yourself an outdoor horno

Leaf Mold is Another Way to Build Your Soil

Where our farm animals come from

How to begin taking wildlife photographs

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...

Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought

Grow some winter squash this year

Okra — Not Just for the South

By Alice B. Yeager Photos by James O. Yeager Issue #58 • July/August, 1999 No one is quite sure about how okra seeds came to this country....

An Introduction to Small-Scale Home Hydroponics

The ‘Chocolate Tree’ Isn’t Just for Kids

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

We built John Silveira’s chicken coop/garden

Build an attached solar greenhouse

Woodbarrow

Livestock fencing for the small homesteader, part 2

Self-Reliance

Medical kits for self-reliant families

Garden injuries Part 2

By Joseph Alton, M.D. Issue #141 • May/June, 2013 In the last issue of Backwoods Home, we discussed some of the hazards encountered by the homesteading...

Drive your own freshwater well

By Len McDougall Issue #128 • March/April, 2011 The well point's slotted holes permit water to enter, while stainless steel mesh inside keeps out abrasive sand. X...

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

Avian Flu — How afraid of this

Gee-Whiz: Insects

Gee-Whiz: Dinosaurs

The coming ice age

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

The Great Depression — A reminiscence

The summer of ’35

Catfish Biscuits

James Polk — A model for modern presidents

Firearms

Frontier style handguns for the modern backwoods home

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...

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...

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...

Preparedness

Start your food storage on $10 a week

Moving on: A small town can be a haven during a depression

10 day survival pack for your vehicle for just $25

Oregon Trail preparedness: What supplies did the settlers carry?

Food security 101

Gee-Whiz: From Paper to Canning

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...