Need some creative ideas affording a property on water in CA

[Tom Conant]

I needs some help and this community has some really creative minds so I'm hoping you guys can help me with some ideas.  Basically, I'm trying to find a way that I can afford to have some acreage on water, be it on a river, large stream, or even a large pond or other body of water that is man made.

I'm looking for a property for my fiance and I to make our forever home to raise a family.  We live in Fresno, and I work in Sacramento as a Firefighter.  My schedule is such that I only have to commute to Sacramento once a week so drive time is unimportant, but we have family in Modesto, Turlock, Merced, and Fresno, so we want to stay somewhere south of Sacramento and north of Fresno so we have access to those areas.

A 100 mile radius of Turlock/Modesto would probably describe the area we're looking.

We have a few criteria:
1. Water going through or on the property (river, large stream, pond big enough for a boat and to fish, etc)
2. Privacy.  This will probably result from...
3. Acreage.  My goal is at least 10 because we have horses.
4. Ability to build or expand to a 5 bedroom 3 bath house over the next 10 years.

Unless we can get some other income coming in from the property (such as a crop, cattle, renting out a guest house, etc), I would like to try to keep my payment under $2500 a month.  Any more than that and it will start to hurt my ability to save for additional rental properties.  That's about a $600k property at 3% interest, and most of what I'm seeing is listed for over a million.

Ideas that have occurred to me:
1. buying land on a river (expensive but cheaper without a house), and then waiting for construction costs to decline and then building a small home with the ability to expand square footage over time as we need it.
2. Damming up a stream on the property and making a pond/lake on the property
3. Finding a run down house on a river that I can rehab (probably ideal but difficult to find).
4. Rob a series of small banks using only the untraceable cash in the tills.

I want our children to have a cool place to grow up where they can go outside and be kids.  Any creative ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Big thanks in advance to everyone.