Home - Backwoods Home Magazine

Just for Kids: Some farinaceous folly

Build a portable woodstove for $30

Seed art — It’s fun to collect the seeds and create these unusual pictures

Turning a $10,000 House into a Home — Part 1: Salvaging the Wreck

Practical Ideas for Self-Reliant Living

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...

Boost your immune system with fast and easy fish dishes

Grow some winter squash this year

Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought

Saving Seeds

By Jackie Clay Issue #129 • May/June, 2011 I go through dozens of garden seed catalogs in preparation for each year's new (and better!) garden. I...

Tomatoes, the Essential Garden Crop

Grow Open Pollinated Seeds for Self-Reliant Gardening

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

The poor man’s ceramic knife sharpener

Build a pizza oven

Build a pallet fence

Build an Old-Fashioned Hotbed and Start Your Seeds in Style

Self-Reliance

Hypothermia — A real winter danger

Start a fire in any weather

By Charles Sanders Issue #161 • September/October, 2016 Most of us living in the backwoods are comfortable with utilizing fire as a tool. We use fire...

Your kitchen pharmacy — How common culinary herbs and spices can help you feel...

By Rebekah L. Cowell Issue #122 • March/April, 2010 In a perfect world, we would get all the nutrients and medication we needed from the food...

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

Gee-Whiz: Ice Ages, Past and Future

Three more ways the world can end … and I’m not kidding

Gee-Whiz: Trees

Gee-Whiz: Dinosaurs

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

the gee-whiz! page: Animals, humans, extraterrestrials, and tools

The barnyard scramble

Gee-Whiz: Presidents

The summer of ’35

Firearms

The Appleseed Project

Firearms handling refresher Part II: Shotguns

By Massad Ayoob Website Exclusive • December, 2003 In Part I, we began a series of refreshers on safety and proper handling of firearms. This time,...

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,...

Hunting, processing, and serving black bear

By Linda Gabris Issue #162 • November/December, 2016 Bear was a popular meat in our house when I was growing up in the rural woods. Black...

Preparedness

Prepper power! Part 2

Circle of friends

Start a fire in any weather

Caring for wounds in the field

Food security 101: part 2

Dollar Store to the Rescue

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...