Goodbye, City Life

Felicia fisher quit her high-powered job to spend more time with her kids on the family farm.

By Elizabeth Ody, Associate Editor

From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, June 2009

Thinking about a dramatic move toward the simple life? "Get your financial ducks in order first," advises Felicia Fisher. She should know. After 13 years as a Manhattan commercial-litigation lawyer, Fisher, 40, decided to quit her day job in order to lead a less hectic life and pursue her hobby: baking pies.

Now she's the proprietor of the Black Buggy Baking Co., which she operates out of what used to be the mudroom in her home in Oley Township, in southern Pennsylvania.

Fisher met her husband, Kirk, 42, at a party in Philadelphia in 1998. Kirk tends to the family farm, which has been in the Fisher family for eight generations and is located two miles down the road from their home. After they married in 2000, two to three times each week she made the grueling three-hour commute, by bus, from Oley to her Park Avenue office, working from home on other days. Some nights she took the bus home again, and others she stayed with her parents on Long Island or even got a hotel room in the city.

The daily grind simply became too much. "There were days when I did not see my children," says the mother of three. Plus, the commercial-litigation business "had gotten so ugly and so much more aggressive in the last few years."

Now her daily commute entails a walk down the stairs, and she can see Amelia, 7, off to school in the morning. Charlotte, 4, and Harry, 2, typically amuse each other until Mom finishes her baking -- by 8 a.m. on a normal day or 11 a.m. on a busy day. And she can dress for work without going near an iron or a tube of lipstick.

Fisher started to get serious about baking when she was on maternity leave number three, in the summer of 2006. It was a natural move to start selling her creations at the family farm stand. After two years of baking on the side while still holding down her lawyer gig, she says, the decision was a no-brainer. "I was trying to stick out my law career for as long as possible," she says. But Kirk's business -- shipping sweet corn to grocery stores -- grew dramatically in 2007, "so we knew there was no way I could be absent from home for another summer." Fisher worked her final day as a lawyer on June 1, 2008.

Family finances. Although losing her salary was an adjustment, she says it's been surprisingly manageable. Health insurance from her job had been covering the whole family, so they've had to start shelling out for a family policy. But she figures they're also saving a bundle on the combined expenses of commuting, baby sitters and an office wardrobe. "The only time I wear a suit now is if I'm going to a funeral," she says.

It also helps that the family has always lived within its means. "I drive a used car, and we don't have the latest flat-screen TV." She says the experience of living close to a set of Mennonite neighbors "helps you realize that you don't really need the luxury items people own nowadays."

Meanwhile, her pies and cookies have become the talk of the town. In July 2008, three days after a local newspaper ran a story about the Black Buggy Baking Co., "I showed up at the farmers' market and there was a line of people waiting for me," she says. "That was when I realized, Wow, I can make money doing this."

The simple life agrees with her. As Fisher noted after one hectic morning in the bakery, "I may have burnt a batch of muffins, but a bad day baking is still better than a good day at the office."

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