There's a couple of things at play here. You mention friends pulling away financially and socially. Speaking to finances, "Keeping up with the Joneses" is hard

There's a couple of things at play here. You mention friends pulling away financially and socially. Speaking to finances, "Keeping up with the Joneses" is hard to do if you're measuring yourself against a peer group that has not much in common any longer. Socially, it would depend on your group of friends. If you just no longer have time for them, then that's a question of "how much do I value this change in lifestyle versus valuing the friendships I'm going to lose?" Growing up I lived in a small farming community. My parents had essentially a hobby farm, but we were surrounded mostly by large-scale farmers and the occasional farm that would probably qualify as part of the "homestead" movement these days. It is hard work and not something I would ever seek to do for myself. BUT: The one thing I found growing up in that community is that for a specific type of personality, that kind of hard work is its own reward. Patching up fences, being able to "create" a thing (even if it's just growing plants), it's a different kind of reward that for some people seems like plenty. I think if you find that reward offsets the work you're doing, and you generally find your life to be better for you than before, then I think you made the right choice. I would also say, the stresses of living on a farm are markedly different than job stresses. Being physically tired at the end of the day but having the mental energy (or hunger at points) to sit down and burn through a good book or documentary is something I actually miss quite a bit. At the end of the day, if you tried it out and don't like it it's not a failure. You've no doubt learned a lot of valuable skills and those can be handy in unexpected places.