I read this book: Finding & Buying Your Place in Country by Les Scher and Carol Scher which you can find on amazon. It covers a lot of your questions and then some. As far as the cost to run the electricity to your house, you can call the electric company that services that area and they can probably give you a general cost. One variable in the cost is how far away the house will be from the main line where they tap in, and wether you want the line above or below ground. As the book mentions, the ability to get power, water, phone, and septic are major factors that must be addressed before buying a piece of property. But there are a bunch of other factors like soil and drainage for siting the house that you also need to factor in. Just beacuse you have 220 acres doesn't necessarily mean that you can build a house on all 220. I have seen 100 acre lots for sale where only 1 house can be built not because of zoning restrictions but because of terrain. Also keep in mind that the further away from the main road that you build, the more cost you will add for site preparation and roadbed. Even if you can handle those costs, you have to think about the costs of clearing for getting out in the snow. You can do that yourself but that adds costs for equipment you will need once you move in. We moved from the burbs to a 5 acre lot in the mountains and it has been quite an adjustment. We used to worry about a few danelions in our small yard. Now I worry about huge trees falling into my house. The scale of problems and the time and cost to deal with them is a lot larger than I ever imagined. I laughed the first time I pulled out the push mower to cut a portion of my 2 acres of grass - it is a useless machine. Now I have a 50 inch cutting deck to get the job done. When the large trees go down, it is a day of work per tree to cut it up and stack the wood. Thank goodness I am handy because without the ability to do things myself, we would be spending a fortune to bring in help. The book helped but it didn't cover everything that we went through to build our home and what it is like to live in it now. We love the natural setting and the quiet - but there is a daily cost of our time (and sometimes money) to maintain that. Giving you costs for these items will be misleading because so much depends on the location of your property, the type of property if is (open or with trees, flat or hilly) the local economy, how far away it is from supply companies and tradespeople , etc. All I can say is that whatever you think it will cost, add at least 20% to that number to keep as a reserve fund to deal with any issues that pop up - which they will. And if you are lucky enough to not need the 20% reserve during the build, you will surely use it to buy new toys that you will need to maintain your land and home. Good luck!

I can attest to the advantage of living in a small town, though not rural. On the day of my DH's funeral we had a deep, unexpected snow. Some of my family came from Maryland for the funeral. They were delayed because of the weather and when they got to my house, we had all left. Not knowing where the church was, they looked in the telephone book to call a cab. When they said they were going to a funeral, the cab guy knew whose funeral it was. Wouldn't want live in a big city. Sue

I am on copper wire phone line provided dial-up also and I think that my download speed is 28.8 kbps. I think that I could have 56 if I had a more modern modem. It is a lot slower than at the library, for sure, and it takes quite a while to download a picture or graphic ... but I am willing to accept that. I downloaded AVG (about 7.[something]) I think ... and it didn't take a really long time - maybe an hour, or slightly more, if I remember correctly. Going to work every day is not part of my agenda for living, these days. I pay $9.95/mo. if I pay annually (and it's soon due) or $14.95/mo. if I want to pay monthly. I think that satellite is about $50./mo. (and don't know how much for a bundle with TV coverage ... but I don't have that). I didn't watch TV enough to feel that it justified my paying for even basic service, when I lived in the city and the cable was in the unit. ole joyful

It occurs to me that there is more to the power-outage thing than just gas versus induction. Virtually all major-brand gas stoves these days come with microprocessor-driven circuit boards that run the oven(s). Those are as vulnerable to power outages, surges, etc. as on induction stoves. Typically, there will be fewer boards to replace, so repair will be somewhat less expensive when the electronics get toasted on a gas range than on an induction range. Note that I said "somewhat." That's from experience. Several years ago. I discovered that how expensive it can be when the control boards died on my former GE gas range. The cost of the boards was so high that I decided I might as well get a new stove instead. There is a bit of an irony here. If you spend a lot of money to buy a "pro-style" gas range (say, Blue Star, NXR, etc.), you likely get a stove with less electronics that are often easier and less expensive to replace. Pro-style gas stoves have simple electrical-mechanical components for the oven without microprocessor-driven control boards. Of course, you still can't run the ovens without electricity to power the thermostat and oven ignitor, but the parts are less susceptible to power problems and can be relatively inexpensive to replace. With thermostatic oven control valves on virtually all gas ranges, you cannot light the ovens in a power outage because the gas won't flow without electrical power. (To avoid those, you need a vintage/antique range or an obscure off-the-grid model or throw quarry tiles in your gas bbq.) Some of the mid-to-higher priced gas stoves these days also use those boards to control the gas flow to the stovetop burners. That will prevent you from lighting those burners with a match when there are power outages or when the electronics die. Gotta read the manuals to find out which ranges have that limitation. (Basically, verify that there are match-lighting instructions in the owner's manual a/k/a "use and care instructions").