Off topic question: what's the current process to make extremely small "minimal" freebsd server install? Is it NanoBSD[1], because the unfortunate downside is that the base can't change (I realize that's a feature) and for a web server or database server that might not be ideal.

[1] https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/nanobsd/

This may not be the answer you are looking for, but OccamBSD seems to be a way to produce a minimal image for use in FreeBSD jails, FreeBSD bhyve and Xen: https://github.com/michaeldexter/occambsd