‘Fake it until you make it’

Talk about a transition.

Four years ago, the marketing director at “Family Circle” magazine in New York City uprooted herself and moved with her family of four from New Jersey to her brother’s farm in Fauquier County. She replaced her designer heels with work boots and traded Jersey traffic for tractors on backwoods roads.
And she wouldn’t change it for a thing. Not now, at least.

Susan McCorkindale began writing weekly e-mails to her friends back home complaining about farm life. Her rants were so entertaining that after her friends forwarded them to their friends, more than 200 people were reading about her adventures chasing chickens.

McCorkindale then started blogging about her experiences, and it only took a week for an agent to contact her about publishing a book. A year and a half later, Penguin Books bought her stories and in October, McCorkindale released her first book, “Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl.”

CSE: What did you think when you first moved to Virginia?

Susan McCorkindale: You feel like, “where have I landed? Is this Mars?” I heard a ‘moo’ and nothing else. No cars, people, no Starbucks, no shopping. I basically freaked out and started e-mailing all my friends up in New York and Connecticut about being stuck behind trucks with hay bales — What the hell? (Laughs.) I couldn’t even find a Starbucks. And when I did, they weren’t even rude to me when I went in. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’

I thought, ‘How fast can I get back? What the hell have I agreed to?’ My eldest (now 17) at the time was 13 — he fainted. The big guy was used to suburbia. But I quit my job and we came down here and my husband took over as manager of this farm and another property. He had no idea what he was doing, but hot damn, he learned.

CSE: What’s the farm like?

SM: We have cattle and my little boy raises bulls and we have chickens and we eat our chickens and we eat their eggs. I ate a chicken last night, and I believe she had a name at one point but I refuse to remember it. We lease pastures and have tenants on the property, so there’s some people here now at least. At first it was really scary quiet. Living-dead-during-the-day-quiet.

When we came to see the farm, we were standing outside looking at the house, and my husband says to me, “It looks like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s house.” And I was like, “Who?” After that, we just started calling it Nate’s Place.

CSE: What do you miss most about New Jersey?

SM: I miss the easy access to shopping and good restaurants. I miss my mommy. You miss that type of stuff but the trade off is they have all the people and down here there’s so many fewer people. There is no traffic.

It’s like living in a postcard; it’s beautiful. Once you realize you can get to D.C. or Tyson’s (Corner) from here, then you really realize that you have the best of all possible worlds.

CSE: Any advice for aspiring authors?

SM: Just write. Don’t worry what anyone else thinks of your work. I have a sign above my desk that says, “Don’t dwell on reality; it will only keep you from greatness.” The reality is, why would anyone care what I had to say? If I’d thought about that, I wouldn’t have written to my friends. If you want to write, write.

Catherine Amos can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 138 or .

Want to go?
Who: Author Susan McCorkindale
What: Book signing of her memoir, “Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl”
Where: Pepperberries, 102 N. Main St.
When: Sunday, 2 to 4 p.m.
Check out her blog at ConfessionsOfaCounterfeitFarmGirl.blogspot.com or visit susanmccorkindale.com.