Paring down for off-grid living

By Steven Gregersen Issue #93 • May/June, 2005 My first exposure to a home power system came when I visited the remote homestead of a retired electrical engineer. What a set-up. Housed in its own little...

Buy your country place from the government

By Dorothy Cady Issue #54 • November/December, 1998 While looking for your place in the country, you've probably been researching real estate books, newspaper ads, and maybe even using the Internet. You may have even considered...

Stay clear of young wild animals

By Tom and Joanne O’Toole Issue #86 • March/April, 2004 This spring and summer millions of wild animals and birds will be born. This is the new generation of wildlife, and their survival depends a great...

Clover — From Livestock Forage to Medicinal Tea, This Humble Plant is One of...

By Eugene Mitchell Issue #130 • July/August, 2011 Whether young or old, lying in the grass and searching for four-leafed clovers is timeless fun. Sometimes they're so elusive, like the leprechaun, it seems they don't exist....

Used bookstores can be sucessful in the hinterlands

By Jennifer Stein Barker Issue #52 • July/August, 1998 If you stand reading at the rack closest to the window, you can look up from your book to see the Strawberry Wilderness looming its wooded heights...

Space heater safety tips

By Tom Kovach Issue #90 • November/December, 2004 If you are going to try to take the chill out of your home without turning on your main sources of heat, or if you want to add...

The many benefits of garlic

By Joe Knight Issue #113 • September/October, 2008 Garlic, used throughout the world for the taste it adds to foods, is also well known for its medicinal benefits. Known as Allium sativum in the botanical world,...

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

By Linda Gabris Issue #97 • January/February, 2006 Call me a sourpuss, if you will, but I love vinegar and can't imagine a day going by without calling upon one type or another for cooking, curing,...

Easy-to-make reusable coffee filters

By Angeline Hawkes Issue #153 • May/June, 2015 With two professional fiction writers in my household, we drink a lot of coffee. Keeping it hot and ready meant going through a lot of paper filters. In...

Better wood heating

<!-- Better wood heating By David Lee --> By David Lee Shop heater. This example is a 55-gallon drum and stove kit surrounded with leftover concrete blocks. I stack extra bricks, slates, and metal on the top to give...

Sew a baby quilt in two days… for a lifetime of memories

By Ilene Duffy Issue #83 • September/October, 2003 During my last year of teaching school, I was pregnant with Jacob. I'll always remember receiving a beautifully crocheted baby blanket that one of my student's mothers made...

Make a quilt out of Levis

By Dorothy Ainsworth Issue #77 • September/October, 2002 Back in the 80s I worked as a waitress in a busy little café where our mandatory uniform was a pair of Levis and a T-shirt. The only...

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 gardener. Burns, cuts, abrasions, allergic reactions, and certain insect stings...

Couponing, refunding, and stockpiling will make your money stretch

By Mary Kenyon Issue #92 • March/April, 2005 Seven years ago, when my brother John helped us move into our current country home, he commented wryly, "If you ever fill those cupboards upstairs I don't want...

The saga of Benjamin, the backwoods, homeschool boy who wanted to get a job

By Margaret Wright Issue #37 • January/February, 1996 Raised in the woods of Northern Idaho, home schooled by loving, protective parents, he was a happy, carefree child for the first sixteen years of life. The sixteenth...

Jackie’s tips for hardcore homesteading

By Jackie Clay Issue #62 Many of us have a garden and enjoy fresh vegetables during the summer and fall. Maybe we even have a few chickens for eggs and meat. But many of us may...