This is a guest post by Todd Detzel, known on The Oil Drum as Todd. You may find his ideas very ambitious. There are other approaches as well, but this post does point out some of the issues you will want to think about.

My guess is that almost all city people underestimate what goes into establishing a homestead. And, most importantly, how long it will take – if you start the process today, you should be ready some time in 2016-2017 -- if you work like a dog and are lucky.

It looks like we still have a problem with word counts. We will get tech support to look at it. There is a post below the fold, if you click "There's more". Word count fixed.