How hard would it be to buy a plot of land and do small-scale farming for a living?
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Not big scale huge fields of corn (thats fucking gay). Is this even possible? Or would I also need to be a wage slave as well?
Depends on what you mean by this. Any other forum, and I would assume you meant "Can I raise 20,000 acres of corn and sell it for a profit that is worth the full year of 90 hour weeks?"
If that were your question, I'd say "No. You can't do that. People who have been doing it their entire lives, whose families have been doing it for a century, who have millions of dollars in capital like large tractors, combines, infrastructure and of course real estate fail all the time at that, and you're not so talented you could start doing it tomorrow with no resources and no experience. That's a fool's question." But you're here in self-sufficiency. You're probably asking a very different question.
You're really asking "Hey, I like to eat, and food isn't magical. Someone, somewhere grows it, and those people aren't rocket scientists so why can't I grow my own food?" And yeh, you can. There are some stumbling blocks, but those aren't so bad. The biggest stumbling block is, despite what it looks like, this has changed in the last 100 years. In 1924 a family trying to grow their own food had some limitations that you just don't have, but you all still operate as if you have those limitations. (They also had some advantages you don't have... cheap land, even in some cases free land, for instance, but there's no point in pouting about it.)
Like them, you can grow a vegetable garden. Most of the same vegetables (with a few superior varieties). Things you like to eat, tomatoes and potatoes and salad lettuce and so on. If you have a suburban home, you can do it right now (well, next spring), even a tiny yard is enough to get started. You need some practice. But if you don't have this, it might be worth trying to grow a tomato plant or two in a pot on a balcony or inside in a sunny south-facing window.
If you have a rural home (or plan to get one), you can have some animals. Chickens are easiest to start with, but a hog or goat's not too crazy to start with. Your biggest limitation here is real estate. Your second biggest limitation is feed. Animals though give you another big category of food (and potentially other goods, like wool), a category that people derive alot of joy out of. No one wants to be some hippy vegans (not even the vegans, they long for suicide without realizing it).
That's about as far as most people try. And it's sort of silly, if you ask me. The third category, that most people shy away from (like you, in your post) is grains. Corn's not quite the villain people make it out to be. Because without grains (and especially corn), you'll have a hell of a time feeding those animals without spending money. If you only want cows and sheep, hay might suffice (but the same people who get anxiety about an acre of wheat aren't exactly growing an acre of hay either). And you don't want 20,000 acres of this stuff. You just want enough to keep a boar and 1 or 2 sows, enough to raise a few weaners to weight. An acre or two would go a long way. And you don't need a million dollar tractor for this. Something you spent $1500 off of Craigslist plus a few hundred more to get running might do the trick. Back before the massive self-propelling combines were a thing, they actually made combines that were pulled by a regular tractor, that harvest grain (all sorts) to a point where it's ready to feed to animals. They made hay balers like that. And harvesting an acre would take less than an hour. Hell, for the price of a cheap grain mill off of Alibaba, you'd have flour. For the price of a cheap oil press, you'd have vegetable oil (from soy, sunflower, whatever). We're getting a long way here towards barely needing anything from a grocery store. About the remainder...
You also enjoy some other exotic stuff that's not a garden vegetable, pork chop, or sugar cookie. You know what those things are, or can find out if you spent an hour looking it up. Plants that don't grow well outside of the tropics, things that have to be processed in a special way (sugar, for instance). Seafood. These have higher startup costs... farming fish requires thousands of dollars worth of equipment. A decent greenhouse the same. Thankfully, most of these things you consume in small enough quantities that it's not absurd to think you could grow enough for yourself (the only exception, I think, might be coffee, that shit looks like you'd be able to a few cups of beans per year out of a greenhouse). The hard exceptions are rare too (no one south of northern Vermont gets real maple syrup, stuff like that). These things were essentially impossible for someone in 1924. But they're 5 clicks away from seeds (and equipment) on the internet. Dozens of books (and videos and everything else) about how they are grown.
So, while the other posts will tell you how difficult it is to sell any of this at a profit, I want to tell you that you just might be able to manage to not need any cash at all (for the grocery store, anyway). Grow enough for yourself. Close the loop. Tell the taxman he can have 15% of your tomatoes if he fucking wants them.
