Our plans right at the moment are to sell this house (way to big for the pair of us and a maintenance nightmare and money sink besides), live in an aprtment for about a year or so (ugh!; turns my stomach but I don;t think we can get where we want to be without doing this) to save the difference between the rent we'd pay the the mortgage we have on the current house. During that time, find a piece of ground locally big enough to have a sizeable garden, good orientation vis-a-vis the sun and not too far off the beaten path but far enough (I'll know what this is when I see it). Plan and build the greenest house we can that gets us as far off the grid as we can be (3 BR ranch so that when we're 80, we don't have to move into a codger's home because we can't negotiate steps).

I'm hoping that the next election will produce a Congress willing to provide significant tax incentives for this kind of thing. Some exist now but they need to be increased and expanded on both the Federal and state (PA) levels. That would help tho not having it will not stop us from doing it.