Toulon You basically described my life. I’m living in cookie cutter hell, but it works well for the family. I want to be out in the sticks, with everything within a 30ish minute drive.
I had the best of both worlds at my last house, 3 acres of land, which was just enough to play on, but not over whelming, could use a lot more, but don’t want it as lawn etc. I was 10 minutes to a shopping center and the on ramp to a major thruway, yet it was completely quiet. The neighbors across the road owned about 80 acres and built a house on top of the hill, needed binoculars to see it, had an elderly couple beside me that just wanted to say hello occasionally as they walked the dog, I checked in on them once in a while to be sure they were all good and they didn’t care what I did as we were a couple hundred yards apart from door to door. My driveway was about 200ft to the road, so I had zero interactions with people if I didn’t want them. It was lovely.
Downside, it was in NY and somehow in a magical snow belt that got DUMPED on whenever it snowed, so that driveway sucked then. One morning we had 20" of snow, my wife called into work about 10 miles away, they had nothing but a dusting, took me 3 hours to get her a path out to the road with an 8HP snow blower.. such fun. Throw in the Communist regime and the already obnoxious taxes and it was an easy choice to leave the state, but it’s going to be hard to ever replace that house. I miss it. My only hope is to build something comparable a little later in life when the kids are older. I think the magic formula is right around 10 acres with 8 of it being wooded, plop a house in the middle of it and live happily ever after. In an ideal world, I get to build a house on a natural slope that allows for a walk out basement, which I would absolutely deck out as a man cave / party spot, along with a huge out building, complete with its own electrical service, plumbing, high flow ventilation system, HVAC and of course refrigerator. I could tinker all day on whatever I wanted and not have to worry about dragging crap back into the house.
ok ramble off.