Hey Ron, we're in a similar situation as you, although we're a family of 5, and we're not very remote. [Northern Ontario, Canada, near International Falls, MN]
We acquired our property in 2018, moved in with my parents who are nearby, and started building a shop in October of 2018. I'm a structural engineer/land surveyor, worked construction for years, lots of GCs in the extended family, and my wife is also a very capable carpenter. So sounds like we're working from similar set of skill resources.
I'll give you the run-down of our plans just for options to consider: We built a 1000sqft shop with a small loft area. 16x24 vehicle bay, 16x30 wood-shop bay with two separate mezzanines above as loft, and a 6x30 "hall" between. That hall has a crawlspace beneath it, an entrance, washroom, and laundry/utility room on the main level, and a full 2nd floor above as access to the mezzanines. We went with a permanent wood foundation on a crush rock base; backfilled footing walls, radiant slab-on-grade in the bays, and crawlspace between as mentioned above. It was cheap, we could do everything ourselves (we had help with the slab pours), it still took us about 8 months to build it (we had concrete poured first week of November which was almost too late, then framed through the winter), but I was also working full-time. The vehicle bay is the kids' bedroom space, the wood-shop bay is our kitchen/living room. We sleep in one of the loft areas (ships ladder access) and the kids play space is the other.
We've been comfortably living in our shop now for just over a year. It's giving us a chance to save money to build our house, and giving us a chance to observe our property over a few seasons. It also gave us a chance to take a Permaculture Design Course (Rob and Michelle Avis of Verge Permaculture out of Calgary, AB, Canada offered their PDC online this year, it was life-changing) which has really given us the tools and perspective to be able to design our property development plans from a permaculture perspective... the mantra that keeps repeating in my head whenever I look at anyone's property now is "water, access, structures".
Honestly, we sometimes think that we could just stay in the shop forever, and not build the house at all... but as our kids get older I do think we'll outgrow the space, and we do really look forward to the wood-shop... although this spring we started thinking that it might have to accommodate indoor growing space too.
So, it may be worth putting significant thought into your design, give yourself time/space so that you're not rushed out sooner than you're ready for.
Good luck!
