I greatly admired your post, thank you so much for that. I live in the largest community in Europe, and every year we are more sustainable. I will be curious to see how you feel about things after a few years go by. Being retired is a beautiful blessing, because then you have the time to take care of some of the more laborious parts of off-the-grid living.
We have wood-burning furnaces, solar panels, and gas, but it is not always enough to cover our needs. We also have extensive food production, including multiple fruit orchards, different types of livestock, and many gardens. Almost all the meat, eggs, and pork we consume comes from our own production, including salamis and sausages, as does most of the summer vegetable, but winter vegetables are still a challenge and our fruit trees are not mature enough for the whole community. We also have the benefit of our olive orchards for oil and vineyards for wine.
But you always have a few people that want the creature comforts, those things we can't grow ourselves like chocolate and coffee. For that we still buy, creating our own supermarket so we know the quality of what we get.
This type of living is definitely more daily physical work, but the rewards of knowing you did it yourself, as you already know, is worth all the effort in my eyes. Keep up the amazing work!