I use to be romanticized by off the grid living, but I have learned, I like conveniences.
A. How is the cell phone reception in this remote property? (because on remote sites, this is your only means of communication, phone, text, and access to the internet, Netflix, etc.)
This is much more of a pain than I realized, there is always sat internet, but it's terrible and a total rip off. We have zero cell at our place.
B. How far to the hardware store? (when you need a saw blade and it's an hour each way, it gets old)
This is another one that I didn't think about much, I always knew we'd have to stick up on groceries a little more being out away from town. But when you need 1 bolt, or a fitting to fix your broken toilet, and hour round trip, or more sucks.
C. How far to a grocery store?
This isn't too bad for us, and honestly, we have gotten used to shopping for longer periods of time.
D. Any emergency services? (and how old are you)?
OP, is pretty old, does life alert work off grid?
E. Is this desert or mountains? (because a solar array good enough to cool a house is a different thing).
On the other hand, solar doesn't do a lot when you are surrounded by 100' trees.
F. Do you cook? ( I like restaurants, and I eat garbage, and an hour each way to get a McDonalds sausage biscuit for breakfast or steak some place for dinner SUCKS)
That's probably a good thing though.
G. Do you have kids or a wife? (because if you want to meet a woman, you gotta kinda be where there are people. and if you already have one, she may not love the situation)
H. Do you ever need a hand, just for little things that are kind of a pain to do by yourself? Because everything out there will be YOU, No help. The people who are caught up in the excitement of the dream and swear they will be there to help you, WON'T. Oh they mean to be, but they have families and lives, and they won't actually be anywhere close to dependable
Dick head friends won't come help me anyway, just have to be more resourceful. Like the cherry picker I welded 2" tube to so I could stick it in my receiver to move shit around the yard
You realize there is a medium right?I have 10 acres, I NEVER see my neighbors, I haven't peed inside in years, and I'm 35 minutes from down town Houston. You don't have to move to BFE to get privacy.
It's hard to get large parcels in CA that aren't in bfe, they're either all bought up, or way too expensive.
Edit: I know one person who did a off the grid yert in the desert and found coyotes to be more of a problem than they thought. They tried to have chickens and eventually just gave up, as well as losing a small dog or 2.
Small dogs off grid? Sounds like they were asking for trouble. We have basically every predador found in CA at our place. The bears mostly just are annoying and fuck with the trash. We did loose a cat, probably to a fox or Bob cat. All our neighbors have seen Mt lions on there place, but our cameras haven't caught one yet, the smell of our dogs may keep them away? I've seen a Bob cat and it's prints in the snow, but never close to the house, again, I think our dogs keep them away. We got a GP puppy to help keep shit away.
We had a rattlesnake in the yard the other day. But where the op lives now, I'm sure he's delt with those.
One thing I didn't anticipate was the GOD DAMN MOSQUITOS! it was so bad last year that they were out all day basically all spring and summer. We have called the county vector control to come fog and it helps, not something you can do off grid.