Backwoods Home Magazine - Practical Self-Reliance

Turning a $10,000 House into a Home — Part 1: Salvaging the Wreck

Vinegar — A splash is all you need for healthful eating, natural healing, and sparkling home

Woodbarrow

By Setanta O’Ceillaigh When I first abandoned a slum town and fled back to the countryside I gathered and carried firewood with a laundry basket....

Boost your immune system with fast and easy fish dishes

Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought

Grow some winter squash this year

Gardening with a Chicken Tractor

By Brianna Stone  Issue #161 • September/October, 2016 This spring, my parents let me enlarge my...

Your Manure Pile — For Fuel, Fertilizer, and Maybe Even Improved...

Start a Self-Sufficiency Garden Even in a Cramped Apartment

Build a Heated Germination Bed

Caring for your chickens in winter

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 an all-purpose ladder

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

A cabin for one

Build a Groundhog Snare

Self-Reliance

Kick the credit card habit and learn to stash cash

Homeschooling through high school

By Janet Leake Issue #65 • September/October, 2000 Why not? Whether you're experienced or inexperienced, whatever your situation, you already know why you want to homeschool...

Survival infection control

By Joseph Alton, M.D. Issue #151 • January/February, 2015 For several months now, news regarding the devastation that the Ebola virus is causing in West Africa...

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

Testing Soil

Gee-Whiz: Alcohol

Gee-Whiz: Presidents

A brief history of health and medicine

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 vanishing outhouse

Farm baseball … with ghost runners!

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

Presidents’ wives of the past Part 4 — Cunning, vindictive, and one may have been a murderess

Firearms

The subtleties of safe firearms handling

Firearms handling refresher Part III: Rifles

By Massad Ayoob Website Exclusive • January, 2004 Our three part series on firearms handling ends with this installment. In Part I, we covered handguns and...

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...

Savage Model 110 — A proven economical backwoods rifle

By Massad Ayoob Website Exclusive • July, 2008 Fifty years ago, Savage Arms introduced a new bolt-action sporting rifle. In the gun world, this was news....

Preparedness

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

Disaster preparation!

Power-up bag

Protein — The Cornerstone of a Survival Diet

Circle of friends

Homestead security for women

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...