Its not even that long ago that life used to be much more "local". When I grew up in the 60s, we lived in a industrial city in Germany. But still everything was in close range. My dad worked in a big factory, which was a 10 minute walk away. My school was 5 minutes away - I never heard the word school bus then. Even later, when I did my aprenticeship down town, it was only a 10 minute bus ride to get there.
Today, you see thousands of people comuting 50 mls every morning from city A to city B - and thousands other from city B to city A. The corner shops have all died, due to the huge supermarkets somewhere outside of town. Without a car its almost impossible to survive now. Some people rather spend a quarter of their income for the car which they need to go to work, instead of working for 3/4 of the money in their neighborhood.
But thats how its supposed to be. The car manufacturers can sell their cars, the oil companies can sell their fuel and the banks can sell their loans. And the citizens are kept in dependency to pay for all this.

But all this is nothing new, and so is homesteading. Already in the 60s and 70s some people tried to get out of this system, by founding communities that tried to be self sufficient. But thats easier said than done...
Especially when it comes to the next generations. Like your kids: now they are still young and their parents are their heroes. Everything you do is phantastic, even more if it involves caring for animals and so on. However, you should not be too disappointed if not all of them want to go the same way that you have choosen. In some years, when they become adults, I mean. Thats how it often goes, I guess, and its a bit of rebellion in that. Like I have seen kids of very straight people become hippies ( or homesteaders if you like), and the kids of those hippies are now very straight people with fancy cars and jobs. Life can take weird directions...