Bob,
I don't have a tractor and probably will never have one. We hope to move towards using horses, mules, or oxen for working the land and have studied that quite a bit and we don't keep much in traditional plow-type "cultivation". We have large gardens and lots of pasture for the cattle and animals. One of the men in our community has a tractor and he will come disc my fields for now, but I don't have a tractor. We currently produce about 60% or so of our food, and 100% of our meat.
I did buy the touchstone, but I don't use it all the time and I certainly unplug it when I am not using it. Our solar trailer (mobile solar array) produces quite a bit of power, so I don't mind using the touchstone at night on occasion, but I also charge the Pre in the truck when I have to go to town, and I bypass the touchstone quite often and plug directly from the cord into the Pre - not sure how much more juice the touchstone uses over just the cord. We basically plug things in long enough to charge them, then we unplug them. We use extremely low-wattage LED lights during the hot times, and the rest of the year we use non-electric lamps and candles. We don't use air conditioning at all, but we do use fans and we build for heat management. The root cellar is mighty nice today
I also have some re-chargeable power units (for inflating tires, jump starting cars, etc.) that have a 12 volt slot and I can use them to charge the Pre.
Salty Off-Grid