Bread — The staff of life

By Jackie Clay Issue #78 • November/December, 2002 In today's hurry-up, prosperous world, bread has come to mean that white, pasty stuff you buy in the store and slap together into boring, equally tasteless sandwiches. Or...

Española eggs

Recipe of the Week  Española eggs  Courtesy of Jackie Clay   You'll find this recipe and over 400 more in Backwoods Home Cooking.Click Here Ingredients Shortening to fry 1 medium onion, sliced 8 Anaheim, Big Jim, or Relleno peppers, green roasted If you want...

Building your chicken coop

By Jackie Clay-Atkinson Issue #139 • January/February, 2013 Here's a coop we built from pallets and scrap lumber. The goats lived in one end and the chickens lived in the other. It was free and worked...

Baked barbeque beans

Jackie Clay Ingredients 2 cups dried beans 1 tsp. baking soda 1/4 lb. chopped ham or other smoked meat 1 cup barbecue sauce 1/2 tsp. salt dash black pepper 1 Tbsp. molasses 1 medium onion, chopped Method Soak beans overnight, adding a little baking soda...

Use Non-Hybrid Seeds and Save Big Bucks in This Year’s Garden

By Jackie Clay Issue #51 • May/June, 1998 Every person who is striving for self-reliance should, and most do, plant a garden from which to raise a good portion of their own food. But how many...

How we found our remote backwoods home

By Jackie Clay Issue #65 • September/October, 2000 Right now I'm sitting in a south-facing huge, sunny window, looking through our own private valley to a larger mountain valley below and the pine covered mountains beyond....

Storing dry foods

By Jackie Clay-Atkinson More and more folks are starting to buy bulk foods to ensure if stores run out of foods — as they did at the onset of this epidemic — their families will...

Preparing for winter

By Jackie Clay-Atkinson Issue #161 • September/October, 2016   In some climates, winter's no big deal — just a little rain and cooler weather. But for the rest of us, winter is something to be prepared for....

Can she bake an apple pie, Billy Boy?

By Jackie Clay Issue #77 • September/October, 2002 Okay, I know in the song it's "cherry" pie, but what the heck, we all love apple pies, don't we? Unfortunately, few people bake good old fashioned apple...

Old-fashioned baked beans

Recipe of the Week  Old-fashioned baked beans  Courtesy of Jackie Clay   You'll find this recipe and over 400 more in Backwoods Home Cooking.Click Here Ingredients 2 cups dry navy beans 1/4 cup ham or bacon 1/2 cup dehydrated chopped onions 8 Tbsp....

Pumpkin preserves

Recipe of the Week  Pumpkin preserves  Courtesy of Jackie Clay   You'll find this recipe and over 400 more in Backwoods Home Cooking.Click Here Ingredients 4 lbs. pumpkin 2 lemons sugar 1/2 tsp. each, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg pinch salt Method Mash the pumpkin and lemon meat in...

Grow Open Pollinated Seeds for Self-Reliant Gardening

By Jackie Clay Issue #56 In the past I've grown hybrid vegetables, mostly the varieties that have been developed to produce early yields. Because of this, I was able to grow things like sweet corn in...

Nut Trees on Your Homestead

By Jackie Clay-Atkinson Issue #149 • September/October, 2014 While growing up in Detroit, we had no nut trees in our yard (though we did have seedlings before I left home). That didn't stop my parents, though....

Fresh cucumber delight

Recipe of the Week  Fresh cucumber delight  Courtesy of Jackie Clay   You'll find this recipe and over 400 more in Backwoods Home Cooking.Click Here Ingredients 3 qts. sliced cucumbers 1/4 oz. mustard seed 1/2 lb. non-iodized salt 1/2 oz. celery seed 9 pints water 1/2...