The first house I bought was a cute Cape Cod at 800 square feet! A doll’s house...but a corner lot in a safe neighborhood. ;)
These days, Beau & I do all the ‘homesteading’ things - but with the ‘luxury’ of a farm house, a barn, electricity, water and heat. ;)
I bought a 900 square foot house - 1975 - in a tiny hamlet with one acre and had a nice garden. Mortgage payment was 150.00. But then I got married and we wanted to have at least 10 acres with lots of woods. We had our dream house built in 1984. Not that big but enough for us. Super insulated, passive solar, woodstove. Enough room for a nice garden. Our livestock days are over. Never did get a mule :(.