The Self-Sufficient Backyard vs My Shed Plans: Which DIY Homestead Guide Wins?
By Megan Forsythe — off-grid homesteader & CERT-certified emergency preparedness instructor.
TL;DR: These two guides aren’t really competing — they’re addressing different layers of the same homestead. The Self-Sufficient Backyard tells you what to grow, preserve, harvest, and raise on your land: the living systems that make a property genuinely self-reliant. My Shed Plans tells you how to build the physical structures those systems need to operate in: the sheds, coops, workshops, and storage buildings. Both carry a 60-day money-back guarantee through ClickBank. If you can only choose one right now, read on — your current stage of homestead development will make the answer obvious.
At-a-Glance Comparison Table
| Feature | The Self-Sufficient Backyard | My Shed Plans |
|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Sustainable living systems — food, water, animals, preservation | Physical structure construction — sheds, outbuildings, workshops |
| Content type | How-to guides, growing plans, preservation methods, system design | Step-by-step blueprints, cut lists, materials lists |
| Blueprint count | N/A (systems-focused, not structure-focused) | 12,000+ building blueprints |
| Beginner-friendliness | High — practical, hands-on guidance | High — blueprint format guides execution |
| Covers food growing | Yes — detailed planting, bed design, yields | No |
| Covers water harvesting | Yes — rainwater, greywater, spring development | No |
| Covers food preservation | Yes — canning, drying, fermenting, root cellar use | No |
| Covers physical construction | Basics only (cold frames, garden beds, basic fencing) | Comprehensive — sheds, coops, garages, workshops |
| Covers animal husbandry | Yes — chickens, rabbits, goats, bees | No |
| Permitting guidance | Not applicable | Included for accessory structures |
| Off-grid application | Core focus — systems for living without grid dependence | Supplemental infrastructure for any property |
| Money-back guarantee | 60 days (ClickBank) | 60 days (ClickBank) |
| Format | Digital guide and reference system | Digital blueprints and instructional guides |
| Best for | Building self-reliant living systems from your land | Building the physical structures those systems need |
Quick Verdict
Buy The Self-Sufficient Backyard if: You want to actually live from your land — grow food, harvest water, raise animals, preserve harvests, and run your property as a functioning self-reliant system.
Buy My Shed Plans if: You need to build the structures that support that system — the chicken coop, tool shed, root cellar housing, workshop, or storage building.
Buy both if: You’re serious about building a functional off-grid homestead from the ground up. These two guides cover adjacent and complementary domains, and the overlap is intentional — a complete homestead needs both knowledge sets.
What Is The Self-Sufficient Backyard?
The Self-Sufficient Backyard (selfsufficientbackyard.com) is a comprehensive digital guide to building a genuinely self-reliant homestead from the land you already have — even a small suburban or rural backyard. Created for people who want to reduce their dependence on grocery stores, utility systems, and supply chains, the guide works through the full spectrum of homestead self-sufficiency: growing and preserving food, raising small animals, harvesting water, and building the knowledge base for long-term independent living.
The guide covers terrain that I’ve spent years working through on my own property, and what sets it apart from generic homesteading content is its practical, systems-thinking approach. It doesn’t just tell you to “grow vegetables” — it walks through bed design, companion planting, seasonal succession planning, and year-round food production in a climate that includes hard winters and dry summers. It doesn’t just say “raise chickens” — it covers breed selection, housing requirements, feed management, predator protection, and integrating a flock into a larger food production system. Every chapter connects back to the core question: how do you actually live from this land?
For anyone who reads my full self-sufficient backyard review, you’ll see that the water harvesting section alone is worth the price of entry for property owners in dry climates or those planning for utility disruption. The guide covers rainwater collection system design, first-flush diverter setup, storage sizing, greywater management, and spring or well development basics — knowledge that takes years to accumulate from scattered sources and is consolidated here in actionable form.
Food preservation is another standout. Pressure canning, water-bath canning, lacto-fermentation, dehydrating, cold storage, and root cellaring are all covered with enough depth to actually execute the techniques, not just understand them conceptually. For off-grid practitioners, this matters enormously: the ability to preserve a harvest surplus is the difference between having food security through winter and being dependent on re-supply.
I’ve been homesteading for over a decade. When I first started, I would have saved years of trial-and-error with a resource like this. The guide compresses hard-won practical knowledge into a format that lets a beginning or intermediate homesteader skip some of the expensive learning-by-failure that used to be unavoidable.
If you want to understand whether the product is credible before purchasing, see my self-sufficient backyard scam investigation and the detailed look at self-sufficient backyard pricing.
The Self-Sufficient Backyard comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee through ClickBank — you can work through the entire guide and request a refund if it doesn’t deliver what you need.
→ Get The Self-Sufficient Backyard — 60-Day Guarantee
What Is My Shed Plans?
My Shed Plans (myshedplans.com) is a completely different kind of product with a completely different value proposition. Where The Self-Sufficient Backyard teaches you how to run your land as a living system, My Shed Plans gives you the construction blueprints to build the physical structures that live on that land.
The library contains over 12,000 step-by-step building plans covering an enormous range of outdoor structures: standard storage sheds in every size, garden sheds, workshops, single and double garages, barn-style buildings, lean-tos, chicken coops, rabbit hutches, greenhouses, cold frames, playhouses, pergolas, and more. Each plan includes dimensional drawings, a complete materials list, a cut list, and step-by-step assembly instructions written for owner-builders — not contractors.
What makes the blueprint-first format particularly useful is the cut list. Before you go to the lumber yard, you know exactly what you need and in what dimensions. This eliminates one of the most consistent mistakes amateur builders make: buying wrong, wasting material, and making mid-project runs for additional supplies. When you’re working on a rural property where the lumber yard is forty minutes away, having a complete materials list before you start is a genuine practical advantage.
For a working off-grid homestead, My Shed Plans is relevant at almost every stage of development. You need a tool and equipment shed before you can work the land efficiently. You need animal housing designed to the specific requirements of whatever livestock you’re keeping — chicken coop dimensions, ventilation requirements, predator protection design, and nesting box ratios all affect whether your flock thrives or struggles. You need a workshop where you can sharpen tools, repair equipment, and work on mechanical projects without cluttering your living space. You eventually need dedicated cold storage or a root cellar structure. My Shed Plans has blueprints for all of it.
For a full My Shed Plans review that goes deep on the blueprint library’s contents and quality, I’ve covered that separately. The short version: the blueprint quality is solid, the beginner-accessibility is genuine, and the library’s breadth makes it a reference you come back to across the full life of a homestead.
My Shed Plans also integrates naturally into larger planning contexts. If you’re working through a complete tiny house living guide or developing tiny house blueprints for self-reliance, the structural principles and foundation options in My Shed Plans apply directly — the overlap between small structures and accessory dwelling knowledge is significant.
My Shed Plans includes a 60-day money-back guarantee through ClickBank. Over 12,000 blueprints, one flat purchase price.
→ Get My Shed Plans — 12,000+ Blueprints, 60-Day Guarantee
The Self-Sufficient Backyard vs My Shed Plans: Head-to-Head
What Problem Does Each Guide Actually Solve?
This is the question that settles most comparisons before they need to go deep. Let me be direct about it.
The Self-Sufficient Backyard solves the question: “How do I actually live from this land?” It answers: here is how you design your growing beds, manage your water sources, preserve your harvests, keep and integrate animals into the system, and build the knowledge base to sustain all of it. The guide treats a homestead as an interconnected biological and operational system that requires understanding, not just a piece of property with stuff on it.
My Shed Plans solves the question: “How do I build this structure?” It answers: here is the blueprint, the materials list, the cut list, and the assembly sequence. Pick the plan, buy the materials, follow the steps. The guide treats construction as an execution problem, not a design problem — you already know what you want to build; the guide tells you how to build it correctly.
These are genuinely different problem spaces. The conflation happens because both products are marketed to the same audience — homesteaders, preppers, and off-grid practitioners. But purchasing one doesn’t substitute for the other any more than knowing how to grow food substitutes for having a place to store it.
Depth: What Will You Actually Learn?
The Self-Sufficient Backyard earns its depth in the areas that separate serious homesteaders from hobbyists: integrated system design and the knowledge to troubleshoot when things go wrong.
The section on water harvesting, for example, doesn’t just describe the concept — it walks through sizing calculations for collection surface area versus storage volume versus household consumption, discusses filtration and treatment options at different budget points, and addresses the regulatory landscape for rainwater collection (which varies significantly by jurisdiction). That’s useful knowledge that takes real research to compile independently.
The food preservation content is similarly specific. Pressure canning guidelines include processing times for different food categories, altitude adjustments, jar inspection procedures, and the safety-critical distinctions between water-bath and pressure-canning applications. This isn’t trivia — getting these details wrong has real consequences, and the guide handles them with appropriate precision.
My Shed Plans earns its depth in execution detail. The cut list for a 12x16 workshop tells you not just how many 2x4s you need, but what lengths to cut them, in what sequence to assemble the wall sections, and how to handle the roof framing connections. This is the kind of step-by-step specificity that prevents the most common beginner mistakes: cutting wrong, assembling out of order, and making expensive corrections mid-build.
What My Shed Plans doesn’t provide is the kind of conceptual depth that The Self-Sufficient Backyard delivers. If you follow a My Shed Plans chicken coop blueprint and something goes wrong — poor ventilation, inadequate drainage, a predator penetration point — the guide won’t necessarily help you diagnose the problem. It’s a build guide, not a husbandry guide.
This is why the two products are most valuable together: The Self-Sufficient Backyard teaches you how systems work; My Shed Plans teaches you how to build the structures those systems require.
Format: How Is the Content Delivered?
Both products are digital, delivered as downloadable PDFs through ClickBank.
The Self-Sufficient Backyard is organized as a comprehensive reference system — you can read it cover-to-cover to build holistic understanding, or jump directly to the chapter most relevant to your current project (planting this season, setting up water collection, adding chickens). The narrative format makes it readable in a way that a blueprint library isn’t, and the integrated approach means topics reinforce each other rather than sitting in isolation.
My Shed Plans is organized as a reference library — the blueprints are the product, and the instructional content supports the blueprints rather than the other way around. You navigate to the structure category you need, select the plan that matches your dimensions and style requirements, and use the general instruction sections when you hit unfamiliar construction steps.
Neither format is universally better. The Self-Sufficient Backyard rewards reading and re-reading as your homestead situation evolves. My Shed Plans rewards immediate action — you have a project, you find the plan, you build.
Audience Fit: Who Gets the Most Value from Each?
The Self-Sufficient Backyard delivers maximum value to:
- Someone transitioning from a conventional household to a more self-reliant lifestyle and needing a systematic starting point
- An established homesteader who is filling gaps in their knowledge — someone who grows food but hasn’t worked out water independence, or vice versa
- A prepper building food security and redundancy into their property systems
- Someone in a rural or semi-rural location with land to work but uncertainty about how to put it to productive use
- Anyone planning for extended grid-down scenarios who wants comprehensive knowledge rather than a narrowly specific guide
My Shed Plans delivers maximum value to:
- A homesteader who knows what structures they need and wants proper blueprints to build them correctly
- A first-time builder who wants a proven plan to follow rather than designing from scratch
- Someone with multiple structures to build over time who wants a single-purchase reference library
- A property owner who needs to build supplemental infrastructure — storage, workshop, animal housing — before the property is fully functional
- An owner-builder who wants to save money on professional plan sets by using a comprehensive blueprint library
The overlap in audience is real and intentional. Both products are designed for the same category of person — the serious, self-reliant practitioner — approaching different phases of the same project.
When to Choose The Self-Sufficient Backyard
Choose The Self-Sufficient Backyard when your primary gap is knowledge and system design — when you have (or are acquiring) land but aren’t yet sure how to make it produce, or when you want to build genuine self-sufficiency rather than just owning the property.
The guide is particularly well-timed for people who are at or near the beginning of their homesteading journey. The mistakes that cost the most on a homestead are usually the ones made at the design stage: planting the wrong crops for your climate, sizing a water storage system too small for actual household consumption, choosing the wrong animal species for your setup, or building food preservation capacity before you have food surpluses to fill it. The Self-Sufficient Backyard front-loads the planning knowledge that prevents these mistakes.
It’s also valuable as a diagnostic tool for established homesteaders who’ve built something but aren’t getting the results they expected. If your garden underproduces, your chickens are disease-prone, or your preserved food stores aren’t lasting through winter, working back through the guide’s systematic approach often reveals the gap.
I also want to be direct about the emergency preparedness dimension. A large part of what this guide covers — food production, food preservation, water independence — is also the foundation of genuine household resilience. The knowledge in The Self-Sufficient Backyard isn’t just about living off the land in ideal conditions. It’s about maintaining functional food and water security when supply chains are disrupted, when grocery stores are empty, or when a weather event isolates your property for weeks at a time. That’s not hypothetical. On my property, I’ve lived through extended grid-down scenarios where the food production and preservation systems I’d built weren’t a hobby — they were the reason we ate well while neighbors depleted their pantries.
If you’re also building structures to house the animals and systems The Self-Sufficient Backyard describes, check out Real Estate Investing and Home Staging vs My Shed Plans and Shipping Container Home Made Easy vs My Shed Plans for additional context on the construction side.
→ Get The Self-Sufficient Backyard — 60-Day Money-Back Guarantee
When to Choose My Shed Plans
Choose My Shed Plans when your primary gap is construction execution — when you know what structures your property needs and you want proven blueprints to build them correctly without hiring a designer or an architect.
The clearest use case is the homesteader who is past the planning stage and actively building out their property infrastructure. You’ve decided to keep chickens — now you need a coop that will actually protect them from predators, keep them warm in winter, provide adequate ventilation, and give you easy access for egg collection and cleaning. You’ve decided to grow serious quantities of food — now you need a dedicated tool and potting shed to keep your equipment organized and protected. You’re canning and fermenting — now you need a cool, dark, structured root cellar or cold storage room.
My Shed Plans is also the right choice when you want to start building before you’re fully confident in your construction skills. The blueprint-first format is specifically designed for motivated beginners: follow the plan, buy the exact cut list, and build step by step. A successful first project — even a simple 8x10 storage shed — builds the hands-on confidence that transfers to larger projects. Many experienced homestead builders will tell you their first My Shed Plans build was the project that made them realize they could do this.
The guide’s breadth is a genuine advantage over sourcing individual plan sets. Over the life of a working homestead, you’ll build a surprising number of structures. A property that starts with a main dwelling and a single utility shed might accumulate a dedicated workshop, a greenhouse, a root cellar structure, a chicken coop expansion, a hay storage barn, and a wood storage shed over a decade. Having blueprints for all of those structures in one library — rather than sourcing plan sets piecemeal as each project emerges — is a real convenience and cost savings.
For additional context on My Shed Plans in the broader DIY homestead landscape, my Backyard Miracle Farm review covers related ground on production-oriented homesteading systems that benefit from proper outbuilding infrastructure.
→ Get My Shed Plans — 60-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Can You Use Both? (Yes — Here’s Why)
I want to be direct about something most comparison articles avoid: for a serious off-grid homesteader, buying both is not redundant. These guides cover adjacent and complementary domains, and the homesteader who has both is better equipped than one who has either alone.
Here’s the concrete sequence where both become relevant:
Stage 1 — Systems design: You’re planning what your property should produce and what systems it needs to support that production. This is entirely The Self-Sufficient Backyard’s domain. What animals fit your climate, your land size, and your goals? What growing methods maximize production per square foot? How much water storage do you actually need for your household plus your animals plus irrigation? What preservation capacity do you need to store a year’s worth of food? These are planning questions that My Shed Plans can’t answer.
Stage 2 — Physical infrastructure: Once you know what systems you’re building, you need the physical structures to house them. The chicken coop you planned based on The Self-Sufficient Backyard’s poultry guidance needs a proper blueprint — floor space per bird, ventilation ratios, nesting box placement, roost heights, predator-proof construction. My Shed Plans has that blueprint. The tool shed your growing operation needs, the workshop where you’ll maintain equipment, the cold storage structure for your preserved food — all of these are My Shed Plans builds.
Stage 3 — Ongoing reference: Both guides remain useful as ongoing references throughout the life of the homestead. The Self-Sufficient Backyard’s system knowledge deepens in value as your operation grows and you encounter more complex management questions. My Shed Plans’ blueprint library stays relevant as you add structures, renovate existing ones, or rebuild after weather damage.
The combined cost of both products, at ClickBank’s typical pricing for digital guides, is a fraction of what you’d spend on a single professionally drawn plan set — let alone the value of the systems knowledge in The Self-Sufficient Backyard. Both also carry 60-day money-back guarantees, which means you can evaluate each product against your actual situation with minimal financial risk.
Mid-Article Summary CTA
If you’re still deciding, here’s the clearest framing I can give you:
- You need to learn how to live from your land: get The Self-Sufficient Backyard first. The systems knowledge there drives every other decision.
- You need to build the structures your land requires: get My Shed Plans. Over 12,000 blueprints means you’ll have plans for whatever comes next.
- You’re building a complete homestead from scratch: get both. They work together in exactly the way a complete off-grid system needs.
→ The Self-Sufficient Backyard — 60-Day Guarantee
→ My Shed Plans — 12,000+ Blueprints, 60-Day Guarantee
Our Pick
I’m not going to manufacture a false rivalry between two products that genuinely serve different functions. But if you’re holding a dollar and you have to choose one right now, here’s my honest take based on a decade-plus of homesteading:
Most people who are drawn to the “self-sufficient backyard” concept are earlier in their homesteading journey than they think, and knowledge gaps cost them more than construction gaps. Buying My Shed Plans when you don’t yet have the systems knowledge to populate those structures is like buying a toolbox before you know what you’re building. The Self-Sufficient Backyard gives you the blueprint for what your homestead should do. My Shed Plans gives you the blueprint for how to build the structures that let it do that.
If I had to give one book to someone standing at the beginning of a homesteading project, it’s The Self-Sufficient Backyard. Not because My Shed Plans isn’t valuable — it absolutely is — but because the knowledge in The Self-Sufficient Backyard informs every decision that comes after, including what to build and why. My Shed Plans becomes most valuable once you know what you’re building and why.
That said, once you’re past the planning stage and actively building out your property, My Shed Plans earns its place quickly. And for someone who already has a functioning homestead system and primarily needs construction blueprints, My Shed Plans might be the immediate priority.
The 60-day guarantees on both products make this a relatively low-risk decision either way. Work through the guide you purchase first, apply it to your current situation, and if it doesn’t deliver — request the refund. Then revisit the other guide when your project stage calls for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between The Self-Sufficient Backyard and My Shed Plans?
The Self-Sufficient Backyard focuses on sustainable living practices — growing food, raising animals, food preservation, water harvesting, and emergency preparedness. It teaches you how to run your land as a productive self-reliant system. My Shed Plans focuses on physical construction — 12,000+ step-by-step blueprints for building sheds, outbuildings, coops, workshops, and small structures. It gives you the plans to build what your land needs. They address different aspects of the homesteader’s toolkit and are most powerful when used together.
Which is better for a homesteader: The Self-Sufficient Backyard or My Shed Plans?
For establishing self-sufficient living systems — food, water, animal husbandry, preservation — choose The Self-Sufficient Backyard. For building the physical structures those systems need — chicken coops, tool sheds, workshops, cold storage buildings — choose My Shed Plans. The “better” guide depends entirely on your current stage: system design knowledge first, construction execution second. Many serious homesteaders end up using both at different points in their property’s development.
Can I use both The Self-Sufficient Backyard and My Shed Plans?
Yes — and this is actually the most natural outcome for a serious off-grid homestead build. The Self-Sufficient Backyard tells you what systems to build and how to run them. My Shed Plans gives you the construction blueprints for the physical structures those systems require. They cover adjacent domains, and having both means you’re covered from planning through execution across the full scope of homestead development.
Do both products have money-back guarantees?
Yes. Both The Self-Sufficient Backyard and My Shed Plans are ClickBank products that include a standard 60-day money-back guarantee. If either guide doesn’t meet your needs within 60 days of purchase, you can request a full refund through ClickBank’s buyer protection system.
Is The Self-Sufficient Backyard suitable for someone with no homesteading experience?
Yes. The guide is written for people who are serious about becoming more self-reliant but may not have prior homesteading experience. It starts with foundational concepts and works progressively through more complex systems. A beginner can use it as a structured curriculum; an experienced homesteader can use it as a reference to fill specific knowledge gaps.
Which guide is right for someone living in a suburban area with limited land?
Both are relevant but The Self-Sufficient Backyard is more immediately applicable for small-footprint situations. The guide addresses intensive growing methods, container gardening, small-animal keeping (chickens on small lots), and water collection in urban and suburban contexts. My Shed Plans is most relevant once you have the land for outbuildings — though even suburban properties often benefit from a garden shed, a small workshop, or a chicken coop blueprint.
Final Verdict
| The Self-Sufficient Backyard | My Shed Plans | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Learning to live from your land — systems, food, water, animals | Building the structures your land needs — sheds, coops, workshops |
| When to buy | Planning stage; before you’ve committed to specific structures | Execution stage; when you’re ready to build |
| Standout value | Integrated systems knowledge that compounds over time | 12,000+ blueprints that stay useful across every build |
| Beginner-friendly | Yes — structured, practical, hands-on | Yes — blueprint format guides execution step-by-step |
| Off-grid relevant | Core focus | Strong — homesteads always need more structures |
| Guarantee | 60 days (ClickBank) | 60 days (ClickBank) |
| Bottom line | The knowledge layer of a self-reliant homestead | The build layer of a self-reliant homestead |
Both guides are legitimate, well-built products that deliver real value to their target audience. Neither is a scam, neither is overpriced for what it delivers, and both carry the ClickBank 60-day guarantee that makes testing them financially low-risk.
The homesteader who invests in both has covered the two most critical knowledge gaps in off-grid and self-reliant property development: how to run your land as a productive system, and how to build the structures that system requires.
Get Started
For systems knowledge — food, water, animals, preservation:
→ Get The Self-Sufficient Backyard — Full Guide + 60-Day Guarantee
For construction blueprints — sheds, coops, workshops, outbuildings:
→ Get My Shed Plans — 12,000+ Blueprints + 60-Day Guarantee
Informational only. This article is for general informational purposes and is not professional, legal, medical, electrical, or financial advice. Survival, energy, and water-treatment decisions carry real risks — consult a licensed professional for your specific situation. Product claims are the manufacturer’s; verify current details on the official site.
By Megan Forsythe — off-grid homesteader & CERT-certified emergency preparedness instructor.