PS  Here's a link to one of my posts on homesteading.  Excuse the spelling mistakes here and there - I'm a lousy proof reader:

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/printthread.php?t=72776

Because this is a forum, there are lots of additional, and good, posts.

Just getting back in here, good stuff on that link Todd, and yes it mirrors my experience. What I did, was work and pay off the land, and a foundation for the house. Put a cap on that sucker and moved in. Stories of rain and bottom plates, and inadvertently build ponds. Cutting door thresholds to let the water out. So we lived in a hole in the ground, and shit in one to.