Backwoods Home Magazine - Practical Self-Reliance

By Hook or Crook: A Billhook is a Handy Homestead Tool

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 with a Chicken Tractor

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

Rotten Luck: The Skinny on Composting

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

Making a wooden kitchen countertop

Three Raised Bed Designs

This coop is for the birds

Building a $3,000 Barn

Self-Reliance

Here’s how to make a musical bamboo flute

For safety’s sake, homestead fuel storage must be handled properly

By Emory Warner Issue #43 • January/February, 1997 Home storage of fuel is a necessity for homesteaders. Even if you are still on the grid, your...

New yarn from old sweaters

By Margaret Mills Issue #132 • November/December, 2011 Years ago, when my grandmother learned that some women purchased new fabric to make quilts, she was shocked....

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

Zombie Apocalypse

Gee-Whiz: Ice Ages, Past and Future

Three more ways the world can end … and I’m not kidding

Testing Soil

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

Declaration of Independence: The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

Gee-Whiz: Presidents

Former first ladies — Beautiful, brilliant, crazy

Presidents’ wives of the past Part 3

Firearms

Thoughts on ammunition

The Appleseed Project

By Massad Ayoob Issue #123 • May/June, 2010 There is nothing else in the shooting world quite like the Appleseed Project, which combines American Revolutionary War...

Understanding the gun debate, part 3

By Massad Ayoob Issue #163 • January/February, 2017 Click Here to read Part 1 Click Here to read Part 2 As noted in the two previous parts of...

1911: The classic homeland security pistol

By Massad Ayoob Issue #83 • September/October, 2003 If you've read American firearms history at all, you know the lore of the .45 automatic. How during...

Preparedness

Food security 101

Battery-Powered Tools are Changing

Caring for wounds in the field

Medical kits for self-reliant families

Emergency treatment for fire-related injuries

Frostbite — Don’t flirt with this sneaky danger

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...