Wow, well I've got lots to say, how much time do you have?
Seriously, I am there right now. We bought 30 acres of land 5 1/2 years ago as a weekend place with the goal of retiring there (in 2017). We are on track to retire and the farm is still high on our list, but I am not sure I believe in the phrase "hobby farm". I think about any farm is a working farm. And it is a LOT of work. Fortunately for us, my DH and I enjoy physical work but there are still times we question whether we want to do this in retirement or not. It is a looming and much talked about subject lately.
We have planted pecan trees and fruit trees, as well as berries. My DH keeps bees (has about 10 hives). We had two cows that then gave birth but ended up selling all 4 back to our dairy friend. They are now grazing our property but we don't have to worry about them. The drought hit the year after we bought our place and the year we bought the cows we had trouble finding hay and it was very expensive. And our goal was to only graze them, after all we had 30 acres and only 2 cows. But we are not there during the week (we live in a major city an hour and a half away) to rotate them and it got to be too much, especially when we'd get a call at night that our cow was out (only happened once) We have read everything by Joel Salatin and many other authors as well. We raised meat chickens one spring and processed them ourselves (with the help of the internet and YouTube videos). We very much enjoy The Stockman Grass Farmer periodical and the quirkiness of Countryside magazine. I make soap and we have experimented with cheesemaking. We had a garden one year (the year I stayed to raise the chickens for 10 weeks) but it is unrealistic to have a garden when you aren't there all the time.
As for tractors, we have a smaller John Deere that I absolutely love. And yes, the front end loader stays on all the time. It is a dream. I love mowing the pastures down after the cows move to the next pasture. We also have a JD zero turn mower for the lawn. Both have been great purchases for us. It would be hard to have 30 acres and not have either a tractor or a finely tuned animal grazing system that takes care of the pastures for you.One thing about farm equipment though. It is not an "investment". It is a tool that depreciates over time. Don't let any sales person tell you otherwise. If you get too excited and buy too many toys, then those toys start dictating your time b/c then you feel you have to "justify" the purchase. So it's tempting to make dumb decisions about how you run your farm based on your equipment and not based on what YOU want to do with the farm in the first place.
We truly love the farm life. It is rewarding and a healthy lifestyle. However, if you have any animals at all you have to make plans for someone else to tend to them or you will never go on vacation. That is a real dilemma for us because we want to improve our land with rotational grazing techniques involving cattle and chickens at the very least but we'd like to try sheep in the mix. So the challenge is trying to figure out how to do all of this and be able to leave it behind to travel now and then so that retirement truly feels like a treat and the farm doesn't feel like a burden.
We have sometimes said that we think if we had to do it all over again, that we would get less than 15 acres. Maybe even 5. You can do a lot and create quite a bit of diversity on just 2 or 3 acres.
I don't want to discourage you. We do love our farm and we get so excited when we find out new things to try. It is a labor of love. And we love the idea of becoming more self-sufficient and growing healthy food. It is just a lot of physical work and long days, depending on what you do, how you do it, and how much land you have to work with. I think that besides reading about it that it would be helpful for you to actually spend some time on a farm and get a feel for what it would actually be like in "real life". Neither my DH or I are golfing types and we've never been prolific travelers so it fits into our needs and desires to be productive, stay physically active, and live a lifestyle more connected to
nature on a daily basis.
Good luck in your research.