Home - Backwoods Home Magazine

Finding, buying, milking, and living with the family milk cow

Lessons learned from an ice storm

Grow some winter squash this year

By Lisa Nourse I love summertime — I love the green of the trees, the warm weather, and growing my own food. I especially love...

Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought

Boost your immune system with fast and easy fish dishes

Build a Heated Germination Bed

By Charles Sanders Issue #92 • March/April, 2005 Many of us who garden have learned the benefits of starting our own vegetable and flower plants. There...

Use Plastic to Get a Head Start on Corn in the...

An Introduction to Small-Scale Home Hydroponics

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

Build a poultry killing cone

Simplify life in your backwoods home by using these easy mountain methods

Build a pallet fence

Woodbarrow

Self-Reliance

With commonsense planning, you can survive hard times

A survival key ring — Your everyday tool for emergency preparedness

By Jeffrey Yago, P.E., CEM Issue #117 • May/June, 2009 If you saw the movie, "Castaway" starring Tom Hanks, you might remember that his character always...

How to organize an outdoor canning party

By Jennifer Grahovac Issue #119 • September/October, 2009 When my husband and I decided to return to Ohio after living for 15 years in the mountains...

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: Presidents

Gee-Whiz: Coffee

Testing Soil

Can we make a Tyrannosaurus rex from a chicken?

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

Former first ladies — Beautiful, brilliant, crazy

Who were the best…and worst U.S. Presidents?

The summer of ’35

From Martha and Abigail to Dolley and Louisa, America’s earliest First Ladies were fascinating

Firearms

Inexpensive retired Russian military rifles can be the ideal backwoods meat guns

Firearms and cold weather considerations

By Massad Ayoob Issue #79 • January/February, 2003 Many of our readers have established their abodes in places which, during the winter months, do not exactly...

Just because

By Massad Ayoob Issue #144 • November/December, 2013 I generally recommend that people buy guns the way they'd buy power tools, or automobiles, or homes. Assess...

Understanding the gun debate, part 3

By Massad Ayoob Issue #163 • January/February, 2017 Click Here to read Part 1 Click Here to read Part 2 As noted in the two previous parts of...

Preparedness

Prepper power! Part 2

Start a fire in any weather

Power Up

Changing the odds in home fire protection

10 day survival pack for your vehicle for just $25

Avoiding heat illness

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...