Backwoods Home Magazine - Practical Self-Reliance

Help your home survive in the path of a wildfire

Livestock fencing for the small homesteader, part 2

Build a chicken house in a day

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 in the Desert Using Only Rainwater

By Joe Mooney Issue #147 • May/June, 2014 I've always found the use of seasonal rains by native peoples very fascinating. From the diversion of floodwaters...

Solar-Powered Electric Fencing

A Child’s Garden — More than Child’s Play

Here’s a Mighty Creative Way to Protect Your Plants from Animals

Raised Bed Gardening — Neat and Productive

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

Life-long siding with fiber cement board

Ambidextrous chainsaw filing

Making a wooden kitchen countertop

Eye-catching signs with mirrors

Self-Reliance

The joys of making soap

Make your own firestarters

By Claire Wolfe Issue #129 • May/June, 2011 I bought an old house last summer and inherited lots of the former owners' stuff some of...

Annie on Everfree Farm, Part I

By Annie Tuttle Issue #145 • January/February, 2014 So here we are. Truth be told, it was a complete accident that we...

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

Theories of the universe

Gee-Whiz: Alcohol

Gee-Whiz: Ice Ages, Past and Future

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

Habeeb Salloum — Poet, Traveler, Recipe Writer

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

The Great Depression — A reminiscence

President George Washington’s Farewell Address

Firearms

Firearms — Tools of rural living

Moderate power firearms

By Massad Ayoob Issue #110 • March/April, 2008 Robert Ruark, the great American writer of the mid-Twentieth Century, was also a big game hunter. One of...

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,...

Answering some well asked questions about personal defense

By Massad Ayoob Issue #97 • January/February, 2006 Jeff Yago, Backwoods Home's energy writer, recently completed a couple of concealed carry handgun courses. The classes apparently...

Preparedness

Food security 101

Your survival depends on water

Help your home survive in the path of a wildfire

The Five “P”s: A fire evacuation grab ‘n’ go kit

Frostbite — Don’t flirt with this sneaky danger

Buying the right emergency radio

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...