Vicki Whicker's remodeled Dunga Brook Farm in the Central New York
                                                                Hudson Valley with dog Chevy keeping watch.

PALISADES MOM TURNS COUNTRY GIRL: ONE WOMAN’S BOLD ODYSSEY
By Bob Vickrey
                                                      
The Palisadian-Post, September 29, 2011

Earlier this month, a longtime Southern Californian gave up her comfortable lifestyle in the beachside town of Pacific Palisades and moved to the beautiful rolling hills of the Mohawk Valley in Central New York.

Vicki Whicker is a single mom whose college-bound son Connor had just graduated high school. Preparing for life as a single empty nester, she decided earlier this year to leave the city life behind and radically change her lifestyle in one swift dramatic move.

She bought a farmhouse in Otsego County on the original homestead for the Dunga Brook Dairy Farm for the jaw-dropping price of $10,000. The property, once covering 2,000 acres, had been owned by the same family since the 1820s and was quite the successful working dairy farm in the area for many years. The acreage was eventually converted from the dairy farm to cornfields.

Otsego County is famous for providing the setting of James Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, and is the gateway to the Adirondacks and the Cooperstown Baseball Museum.

The house sits on the crest of a hill surrounded by 400 acres of farmland with a 360-degree view of open land. Whicker calls it all “stunningly beautiful, with temperate days, cool nights, and scenery galore. There are clear blue skies, clean air, and unbelievable sunrises and sunsets.” She said “it’s a place where the flowers on Queen Anne’s Lace grow big as pie pans.”

She has chronicled her journey on Facebook from start to finish in words and mobile phone pictures, and friends were allowed to follow her trek across the country as she reached her new home. She playfully named it “Facebook Farm.”

Her friends in Los Angeles were surprised and somewhat bewildered by her decision to take on the wilds of the country life by herself. She did have supporters of her adventurous life-changing move, but there certainly have been no shortage of skeptics when it came to her leap into the unknown.

Many of the Central New York locals seemed mystified by her move, including her lawyer who is a Cooperstown native. Even the guy manning the local docks was baffled by her decision. She said “they all scratched their heads and asked where my man was, and wondered how I’d be able to handle a long winter here.” Whicker said one Los Angeles friend had gone as far as asking if a woman could actually buy a farm without a man being involved in the process.

However, her friends who know her best will quickly tell you that Vicki possesses the pioneering spirit and journaling talents of a modern day Willa Cather. She has always shown the artistic sensibility and creative flair of a budding Georgia O’Keefe. This was not the first time she had surprised her friends and family in making bold decisions.

She worked for several years in the fashion business for LA Gear as the company rocketed to success in the early 90s. She also had stints at Sketchers and Diesel. She traveled the world as a product manager and line builder. After her son was born, she was a stay-at-home mom for a couple of years and later turned her attention to writing and painting.

Whicker is the founder of the poetry group Twenty-Liners and has edited the literary anthology Mo+Th Magazine. Her work has been published in Big City Mantra, Issues 1-5, and her poems were included in the 2002 book collection, Twelve Los Angeles Poets.

As a painter, she studied with George Small at the Art Studio and David Limrite at Brentwood Art.

She was born in Florida and moved to Illinois at age 11, after her father had taken a job promotion there. She spent five years in Vail, Colorado, and told friends if she could handle one memorable winter season there when they endured 31 straight days of snow, she could certainly handle whatever an Otsego County winter could deliver.

Whicker had received the initial tip on the farmhouse from a Los Angeles friend named Tim whom she had known through her writing classes in Southern California. He had bought acreage on an adjacent property several years earlier and had encouraged her to pursue her dreams of living a country lifestyle. Tim had warned her that the house needed lots of work and major restoration, but after having crawled under the structure and inspecting the sturdy hand-hewn beams, he declared it a house that would last another hundred years.

The house is a Federal design, and quite well made by the artisans of the day, as evidenced by its straight lines, post and beam bones, and stone foundation. The front and sides were restored to the original style and the inside and back of the house have a barn-like interior with exposed beams to the rafters. The farmhouse is complemented by plenty of windows and natural light.

While the remodeling was taking place, she and Connor, and their dogs Chevy and Plato, roughed it for a few months at a KOA campground in nearby Cooperstown. On his first night there, Connor played the typical LA newbie and asked about an Amish handyman passing by in his horse and buggy and wondered if there was filming going on in the area. He was quite sure the man was one of the costumed extras.

After the renovation was completed, Whicker found herself looking forward to the next phase of her life which included coping with the ‘empty nest’ after her son left for Quincy University in Illinois in the fall. She decided to focus on her memoir writing, poetry, and painting. One of her ambitions had been to host ‘method’ writing retreats on her property.

Since Tim was one of the poets involved in Twenty-Liners, he was to become an integral part of those retreats. His 10-acre property houses several barns, so he and Whicker made plans to share their resources. Both envisioned an artist/writer organic farm cooperative venture on the acres they now share along Farm Road 19.

She still seems excited about her relatively new life in the wild, but when caught in a reflective moment recently, Vicki said “Sometimes I have misgivings about my decision when it’s just me, the dogs, and the pellet stove during an ice storm. But most of the time the place just gets more magical each day.”

Her winter plans call for a few months of living in “monk-like conditions conducive to writing that experimental first novel.”

Some skeptics may be betting against this woman and her adventurous quest, but those who know her best say the smart money should remain on a woman named Vicki Whicker.

Bob Vickrey is a freelance writer whose columns have appeared in several Southwestern newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. He is a member of the Board of Contributors for the Waco Tribune-Herald. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.