Land can be rented. You can live on a property and rent the crop land or rent hunting rights in season. If you buy land already in the CRP, you also buy the CRP contract, which can pay some or all of the taxes, depending. If the land is in the Managed Forest Program, it reduces your taxes and the contract transfers to the new owner. You can also rent any home on the property, separate from the land rental.
A woodland camp is assessed at recreational land levels, but really, the majority of taxes are on the improvements. If the land is tillable and has been a working farm, you can continue to rent the cropland and those parcels will be taxed at the lower ag rate.
Ideally, you would spend time somewhere and get to know folks. There are always people around who make it a business to manage property for absentee owners. You have to invest the time and get to know whom to trust and rely upon.
That said, the ideal would be to sell out of the city/suburb and live on your rural property. It really is safer out here. There are not feral gangs squatting anywhere. You have 3 years of non-payment of taxes (should something awful happen) before it goes to a sheriff’s sale.
Look for places with reasonable taxes, reasonable zoning. Most rules are from the township. Townships are small, population-wise, and you have a say. Not many services, but, for example, we pay $20/per time for someone to plow our drive now that we are getting older. Expensive this year, with a lot of storms, but usually not that bad.
People are moving here and starting businesses. Some telecommute to their present job. Some are retired. Pay your bills, mind your own business and make friends and you will find yourself welcome. We have credit unions and investment services out here, too.
We came here in 1974. It took awhile, but we have good friends, some transplants, some locals. We lost a great deal in the Crash and we are selling out and downsizing by this time next year. The land appreciated. We will net out at about 8x our purchase price, 6x if you count the improvements we made and we have lived and worked here on the property for nearly 40 years. So, it was the best investment. We will ideally end up with a small place and have replaced our cash nut.
There are no longer any sure bets, IMO. I recommend Talib’s book “Anti-Fragile”. You need to assess any situation and yourself in terms of resilience. Not have all your economic eggs in one basket, be prepared to shift your economic and social weight with the changing circumstances, and have at least 3 plans for any contingency.
you are preaching to the chior - ive got a second place (80 acres) in the hills 60 miles from our place in town - I can swing the extra taxes - but its not really an doption for some folk - that was more my point - thanks for the thoughtful response