This has been an awesome read. My wife and I have bought 49 acres in Central Maine as well and have started to grow a like minded community. We have had some run ins with town officials due to pesky neighbors complaining about how we do things and the fact that we reuse just about everything when building. Such as giant tractor tires that we plan on filling with cement for foundations and such. We built our home this year closer to the front due to having kids and needing something for the winter. The town officials basically said that when we move further out back we will have no troubles at all because no one is going to bother to go miles in the woods to look at anything. We have some people living with us currently and really are looking to expand. A great deal of what you said is how we are thinking as well. We have been doing 1 acre "lots" for $100 a month and that is just for personal area as we have tons of shared areas like the garden, kitchen and such.
How are you guys finding people of , for lack of better words, quality? A handful of people have come stayed a weekend and then disappear, which to each their own. But we want to find long term like minded people to share this dream with and we have had some luck but not much.
Our term we are using is not self-sustainability, but more of a Community Self-sustainability. We would like for no one to need anything more than what we can provide from the land in which we live. This of course will take time and people to make happen and we hope it does work out.
