[hpeinar]

As other have asked, it would be nice to get some clarification a bit on what exactly do you mean by "homesteading?". Did you buy a full blown farm and are now keeping cows? Is there a specific reason you didn't want to move to countryside but still keep your tech-job remotely?

I can share some of my own experience, as I'm a second year bee-keeper and CTO with around 16 years of experience. So I've chosen to share my life between a excellent tech job & a city apartment and a country side house (2 hour drive from my apartment).

We decided to start bee-keeping with my wife two years ago because we both felt the need to be in the nature. And bee-keeping has really been a great choice because it doesn't need your attention 24/7/365. During the ~4 winter months we have here in Estonia, I barely go there, maybe 2-3 times. So I still have the freedom to travel or pursue other hobbies if I'd like to. And during the sprint - summer - autumn, I only need to be there once a week which also isn't a fixed day, so I can play around my work schedule nicely. Sometimes I even go there during workdays and just do some remote work from there, in the middle of the woods where the only sounds you can hear is wind blowing and birds chirping. I'm obviously there a lot more than that, but this is the bare minium, this is the "I HAVE TO" and if the weather sucks or I'm busy otherwise, I don't have to go more than that.

And even though it's sometimes physically hard and tiring, it has had a enormous positive effect on my life. Doing something with your own hands that you can see and touch is a very different kind of happiness than the one my work offers me.

But all this comes with a "but". I mostly grew up on the country side, even more so, I'm actually keeping my bees at my grandmothers house (where she no longer lives due to her age) where I spent most of my summers during childhood. So I knew what was waiting for me regarding up-keeping the house & land.

What I'd suggest is to do the things that make you happy not the things that others are doing. If you don't like the physical work, don't do it. If you'd just like to enjoy nature, just get a cabin the in woods where you can go from time to time.

I'm in a lot better place with my good paying tech job and half-time bee-keeping because I also have the funds to invest into the house & land and make it more livable for the future. If I would have just quit my job and moved there full time, I'd be struggling to make the ends meet, let alone actually build houses there and develop the place for the better.

Tools, resources and materials (wood, metal, sand, gravel etc) and help from professionals all cost money. It's a lot easier to earn that money in tech than with farming. But in case the society as we know it today collapses, I still have the skills, tools and land to live off, but it hasn't yet, so no point in going full off-grid yet.