A new adventure in living off the land

So we had this plan when the kids had grown up and left us, to buy a place and grow our own vegetables, do the self sufficientish thing, living the "good life" or homesteading as they call it in US. Then we were challenged, "Why wait?"
We met other people who were doing it. I wrote this article, which gave me a chance to ask a heap of questions I also wanted answered.
We began planning to jump right in now.
Finding the right property took about a year. But we are on the verge of taking possession. It was difficult task of working out the compromise on the amount of land, the house, the distance from a town and the price. The whole plan is only going to work if the mortgage is easy for us to pay off in a short time.
So this will be our journey of trying to do be self sufficient to some degree but more about a not being over consuming and stepping out of the current world view to buy the latest, having an impressive house and work long hours for someone else to achieve it.
I am expecting it to be an interesting and challenging ride. So far from the books we've been reading, it seems any such adventure is going to contain learning by mistakes and a lot of work. Others are also keen to tell us how much work it is going to be. It is going to be a lot of work but it will be for us and to feed us - we love tasty food. And really all it is, is a house with a bigger back yard.