I hear that. I'm in SoCal and as such have a lot of sun, but also in a place with a good bit of wind. So I'm working on a combo system. But with the advent of the new solar shingles, I'd like to let that get fleshed out as I need to redo the roof anyway.
Already on a well now, working on the rest. Like you said....life long job and this is my first foray into it.
I bought property with a continuously flowing mountain spring head on it and a creek below that. I ~should~ do a well, but 4 years of hauling water up a massive hill in buckets to the cabin and still haven't gotten around to an expensive well drilling project closer to the cabin. "Oh, Well" ;)
I'd love to have a spring/stream, but not gonna happen here. Desert living, lucky to have the well. It was already here, I just had to have maintenance done and a new pump put in.
I'd bet drilling would be expensive. How far is the spring? If it isn't too far, perhaps some form of an Archimedes Screw into a pipe system. As long as it is flowing it will power the screw and push water uphill.
It looks to me like what I need to build is a hydraulic ram pump and possibly some spring boxes down creek...
I started out owning 500 acres of Nevada USA desert, but never moved onto the property. I ended up choosing 17 acres in an east coast mountain range called the Blue Ridge in North Carolina instead for the much better natural resources available at this location.