The 7 Best Small Farm Magazines

Ready to curl up on the sofa and dig your teeth into some interesting and helpful magazines? We have collected the best small farming, homesteading, and self-sufficiency magazines for you to choose from. Well worth a look and if they match your needs and interests, a subscription!

Mother Earth News

Mother Earth News is a classic, having been around for decades. Much content is available online, but the print magazine delivers updated information with gorgeous photos and incredibly helpful information. The articles are heavy on the how-to, with plenty of personal experience peppered in. The tone has the feel of getting information in a conversation with another farmer. There's a focus on homesteading and self-reliance, which is what newer victory gardens focus on, but any small farmer will find this magazine chock full of things to apply to real life, today.

Grit

Grit is a long-established magazine that has a new focus on rural lifestyles in all their forms. So whether you're homesteading, hobby farming, or serious farming business, you'll find how-to articles you can use, as well as a dose of conversational wisdom and camaraderie from other rural-living folks. Online features quite a nice handful of bloggers - more than two dozen, including blogs written by readers of Grit.

Countryside & Small Stock Journal

With many small articles but a ton of information, Countryside & Small Stock Journal is full of hands-on information about gardening, homesteading, farming, and self-sufficiency. Make your own foie gras, build a root cellar, or read about a family who has lived off-grid in the mountains for nearly two decades.

The Progressive Farmer

The Progressive Farmer has been published for over 130 years. It is an agriculture magazine with more of a farming focus than homesteading or self-sufficiency. With a healthy agricultural news feed on the homepage, the website is loaded with information on markets, livestock, weather, crops and other small farming news. The magazine similarly provides in-depth information on such farm-related subjects as raising livestock, providing your farm with alternative power, and managing acreage and land.

Small Farm Today

Published bimonthly, each issue of Small Farm Today has a focus on one or two topics, including livestock; wool and fiber, marketing; and equipment, herbs, and greenhouses. A heavy focus on how-to and specifically aimed at the small-scale farmer who is making a living with his farm, Small Farm Today is a great read with a lot of information to absorb in each issue.

Hobby Farms

Hobby Farms magazine is just that: a magazine about hobby farming! So here you'll find articles, recipes, and how-tos that are geared to the small-scale "pleasure" farmer who may take some extras to the farmers market, but who isn't primarily farming as a business. "Livestock & Pets" is a category, suggesting that not all the residents of a hobby farm are destined for the dinner table. Sections on marketing and management coexist peacefully with information on crafting and do-it-yourself pieces.

Urban Farms

A new offering from the publishers of Hobby Farms, Urban Farms takes the solid how-to information and advice of Hobby Farms and gears it toward the would-be farmer who lives in an urban setting. Recognizing that you can bloom where you're planted, even if that's the middle of a city, Urban Farms encourages the urban farmer with advice, tips, and solid practical information as well as profiles of urban farmers and recipes for delicious homemade goodies of all sorts.