If you're in a major metro like the bay area, 1.5 hours still doesn't get you far enough to afford anything like enough land for a hobby farm on anything short of a FANNG salary.
You need a FANNG salary to afford most hobby farms even if the land was free. It is possible to make a good living farming a hobby farm sized lot, but most hobby farms are not managed to do that (most are about horses which are a large money sink)
Sure it does. 1.5 hours gets you to Stockton or Gilroy or Modesto of Fairfield and lots of other more open places where you can get a few acres at a decent price.
Based on a quick look at Zillow, 5 acres (undeveloped, no house) goes for nearly a million dollars. We have fundamentally different ideas of what constitutes a "decent price" if that qualifies for you. I'm 6 hours drive from the my office in Mountain View now, and I'm looking at a similarly undeveloped plot that's 250 acres and worth somewhere between $200k and $300k.
A house can be built on that lot for $150k (though most will probably spend more like 200k), a barn for another 100k. Still cheaper than a similar house right in SF.
There are cities other than than the west coast as well. 5 acres 1.5 hours from Minneapolis will be 300k with a house.
