Let the cheapness flow. Last Tuesday, I wrote about Backwoods Home Magazine, today I am reviewing the companion publication. The story as I understand it was that the kids of the publisher started this magazine. I am presuming the strategy was to leverage the name of Backwoods Home to kickstart this one.
My interpretation of the mission statement is similar content, less controversial. Of course, less controversial is subjective. What is missing is content on firearms and politics. My one look at Backwoods Home, I saw some of those two but really very little; I would say two columns. Nevertheless, as promised it is not here.
Below is a look of the contents of Self-Reliance Magazine.
- Tips on watering your Garden
- The front porch concert
- From tree to table: Harvesting black walnuts
- The jitter free cafe (coffee substitutes)
- How to build a bee house
- 11 building mistakes
- Protecting canning jars during an earthquake
- Natural Goat Horns
- Homeschool vs. online school
- Blueberries for all of us
- Sew a ram apron
- A primer on zippers
- Grain Sack Totes
- The complicated world of corn
- Foraging farther off the grid
- Making crock pot yogurt
- Healthy, heart smart Greek cuisine
- Six soulful smoothies
In many ways, I felt like I was reading an extension to Backwoods Home. Most of the subject matter was the same and even authors/columnist cross back and forth. I felt like Self-Reliance had additional food and crafts to make up for the content the parent publication has. It is probably subconscious because I knew this before I started but I felt like the the overall tone was subdued compared to Backwoods Home.
From this, I am interested in trying to make yogurt, I thought that there was some good advice to secure canning jars and the Ram apron was an eye opener. This is a device to prevent the ram from breading when it is the time of year. The zipper article offered some tips on mending and it confirmed some things that I thought I knew.
Maybe I shouldn’t admit this either but I have my eyes open for picking up a second hand sewing machine because it is so much easier and better than sewing by hand. I have sewed a number of patches on my kids Boy Scout Uniforms and it takes a long time. Ideally, they would show some initiative and do this themselves but I could see some value in mending myself.
End Your Programming Routine: I am strongly considering subscribing. If I do, there is a deal to get both in the same transaction which is what I will do. That being said, if I only could pick one it would be Backwoods Home over Self-Reliance. It just felt more like me. There are several publications that are pretty similar as well like Grit and Mother Earth News come to mind. The extra spicy Backwoods Home is a differentiator.
Recent Comments