Articles - Backwoods Home Magazine

Keeping homestead animals healthy

Goat birthing and raising kids

Are aliens stealing our honeybees?

A contrary guide to feeding animals

Livestock fencing for the small homesteader, part 2

By Don Lewis In the last issue of Backwoods Home Magazine, we covered Part 1 of livestock fencing for the small homesteader. The article included...

A Small Space Yields a Big Crop of Garlic

By Howard Tuckey Issue #131 • September/October, 2011 In less than an hour last fall, I tilled up a 4x8 foot garden bed and planted 250...

Solar-Powered Electric Fencing

Gardening with a Chicken Tractor

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

James Polk — A model for modern presidents

By John Silveira Issue #32 • March/April, 1995 It was snowing and three of us were up at the office. Dave Duffy, the fellow who publishes...

Presidents’ wives of the past Part 3

Cultured milk — Food of centenarians

Get out of debt, stay out of debt

Clover — From Livestock Forage to Medicinal Tea, This Humble Plant is One of Nature’s Best Gifts

Battery powered weekend retreat

Thoughts on ammunition

By Massad Ayoob Issue #108 • November/December, 2007 Ammunition is to firearms as gasoline is to automobiles. However, with guns and ammo, the fit isn't quite...

Bury a gun and ammo for 15 years

Choose your ammo… police style

Gee-Whiz: Dinosaurs

By O.E. MacDougal July/August 2014 Backwoods Home Biologists and paleontologists are now pretty certain that birds are part of the dinosaur lineage. Their extinct relatives include...

The world is coming to an end… and this time, I’m...

Want proof of luck, ESP, and psychic powers?

Getting the state out of marriage

Every group needs a black sheep

Broody biddies make sense on the homestead

By James Kash Issue #139 • January/February, 2013 Broodiness is an avian behavior that is frowned upon in the world of agriculture. All industrial agriculturalists cull...

Slaughtering and Butchering

By Dynah Geissal Issue #23 • September/October, 1993 Fall is butchering time, a period of joy in the harvest of the year's work and of sadness...

How to buy your first sheep without getting shorn

Hog butchering — Using everything but the squeal

Llamas guarding sheep? — Not such a far-fetched idea

Raising cattle on your own place

Battery-Powered Tools are Changing

SARS — Is this a glimpse of the future?

Drive your own freshwater well

Tea for the garden

By Lisa Nourse We have poor soil and do our best to amend it with compost and manure every year. However, we feel our plants still need a boost throughout the growing season. We like...

By Sylvia Gist Issue #107 • September/October, 2007 As a kid in western South Dakota, I enjoyed picking wild grapes and using the delightful juice they produced, so when I eventually acquired property in Montana, I...