I'm actually working on something like this, although minus the hippie aspect. The biggest hurdle (at least here in California) is zoning. Every county in California restricts ag-zoned land to (at most) two dwelling units, where "dwelling unit" is typically defined by having a kitchen. There are some ways to work around this, especially if you're willing to go the "tinyhouses on wheels" route, but you get into grey zones pretty quickly.
I don't think that it has to be hippie at all. There would be some shared areas, but people would live at their own homes. The company and the farm would be shared, but that's the idea.
Guess that the whole twist would be to not only depend on agriculture for providing income and food.
Also, I wouldn't make it about living isolated from society, without electricity, cars or mobile phones. It would be a much more relaxed, simple life, but every individual or family would put their own limits, respecting their comfort zones.
And yes, there would be life in community, maybe sharing some meals or having kids play together, but as I said at the beginning, families would have their own houses or appartments, so they could also here decide how far they want to go.
The cool thing would be having lots of like-minded people (= engineers) living and working close together, which could develop into some nice side projects and ideas.
Digital Hutterites. If you haven't already, you should look into how they (the Hutterites) structure their communities. It seems like there are a lot of parallels with what you are thinking, religious aspects aside.
Interesting. I'm in Sonoma County. Would love to hear more about your plans with this. hey @ mikegranados [dot] com if you feel like discussing it sometime. I'm frequently in SF.
I wrote some more in an earlier thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9437392