Good news! The seller of the New Hampshire land countered my lowball offer, meeting me considerably more than halfway. My wife and I talked it over for a few minutes, decided that it wouldn't be worth countering the counter (the truth is, his price is lower than I'd earlier been considering as an opening bid, and substantially less than he paid for it in 2005), and phoned back to accept.
We have some contingencies in the contract that could cause this thing to unravel, but control is now in the hands of our lawyer and the town council. If the two can do what's necessary to ensure construction of residential and agricultural buildings on the land will be permitted, I'll finally have my farm.
I've only been bugging you guys about the importance of buying farmable land without having any myself for . . . what? Eight or nine years? Looked at in that light, I guess this isn't that big of a deal.

Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months