Your plan sounds like a good way to get into the pool... get your feet wet before plunging headfirst! Somewhere along the way you will reach a turning point where you find that having your own equipment at hand is more efficient and economical than hiring or calling up your friends for help or trying to do something using manual labor. Until you reach that point, it's sound for you to defer a major investment.
The only caveat I'd mention is that, if life around your new place is anything like our experience, there are a thousand unforeseen, unexpected tasks involved in developing and maintaining property. What you see initially is only the tip of the iceberg, as it were. With your own tools, the work can be prioritized and addressed with some measure of efficiency and economy. Absent such tools, the alternative is you get nickel and dimed to death hiring it all out, you wear yourself out doing things the hard way, or the work isn't done at all.
Here's a real-life example of how things come up... this is what I did yesterday. 85 year old widow across the road from us had a 70 year old tile culvert that was broken and clogged so the dirt road in front of her place would flood every time it rained. Using the tractor with loader and backhoe, I excavated the road and placed a new 20 ft. corrugated culvert. Problem solved... neighbor happy. Easy job with the backhoe; would have been days of backbreaking pick and shovel work. She couldn't have afforded to pay someone to do the job.
