Articles - Backwoods Home Magazine

Animals

Raising your own beef for your family

Bovine basics for beginners

Mountain lions — Attacks are still rare, but just in case…

Bottle-raise a calf

Building

Making Apple Cider with a Homemade Press

By Robert Van Putten Issue #170 • March/April, 2018 Apples are an important food resource for us. Every year we store hundreds of pounds in our...

Make your own effective fishing tackle while you save money and...

Livestock fencing for the small homesteader

Making and using a solar cooker

Build Your Own Hoop House

Farm and Garden

Tracing a bean

By Wren Everett The beans came to me as an accident. In the early spring of 2023, I was scouring The Exchange (exchange.seedsavers.org/home) — an online...

Growing and Using Bamboo on the Homestead

Saving Seeds

Growing Microgreens

Cheaper than Store-Bought Eggs

Americana and History

Biological and chemical weapons through history

By John Silveira Issue #81 • May/June, 2003 The weather here on the coast of Oregon is nice almost all year-round, and there almost always seems...

Presidents’ wives of the past Part 4 — Cunning, vindictive, and...

Doesn’t anyone remember Tom Paine

Gee-Whiz: Presidents

The time-travel ad

Food and recipes

Elegant desserts for entertaining

Egg thingies

Chicken Enchiladas

Winter baking warms the house

Self-reliance

Life-saving snowshoes

Step onto the ice and catch tonight’s dinner

The raging torrent — Respect it even when you play

There’s no such thing as free land!

Energy

Design calculations for overshot waterwheels

A small creek provides plenty of power for this off-grid home

Solar-powered refrigerators

Grid-tied, Grid-connected, Off-grid. What’s the difference?

Guns and Hunting

The time for modern; the time for traditional

By Massad Ayoob Issue #137 • September/October, 2012 Traditional "old skool" guns, or the most modern and efficient ballistic hardware that money can buy? I asked...

Firearms handling refresher Part I: Handguns

How to shoot a handgun accurately

Air power superiority

Catch your own bait

Science

How big is the solar system?

By John Silveira Issue #60 • November/December, 1999 In artists' renderings of the solar system we often see the sun represented by a small sphere with...