City mouse, country mouse

I mentioned in an earlier post the idea of moving closer to town, but I'm not sure if this is even a possibility. We just started looking at vacant lots in town with the thought of building a very small house there. The problem is, there are very few vacant lots and the ones that are for sale are quite expensive for their size. I mean, compare a third of an acre for $38,000 with twenty acres for the same price a little ways out of town.

We essentially have two different ideals of how we wish to live. On the one hand, we would like to live in town and be able to walk to all the amenities in town. On the other hand, we don't like interacting with tourists very much and would like a small place out in the country, with land to interact with nature and expand upon if we want in the future. Living in the country would obviously be a lower cost of living, since we would have a well and septic or composting toilet/gray water system, connecting only to electric service. We would pay a bit more for transportation into town more often, but could also grow some of our own vegetables. Building would be much easier in the country too, without all the rigid Historic District guidelines to follow.

I also like the idea of our children growing up in a country setting, where they have room to roam and could pitch in and help with many of the aspects of keeping up the house and land. I want my children as far away from commercial consumerism as possible. Since they will still go to public school, they will be influenced somewhat by what their friends are into, but I can certainly control our attitude toward it at home and hopefully some of what we teach will "stick". Maybe we should aim for our "country mouse" dream for now, and see what happens in the future...