A girl and her horses.
Meet Aleah Wicks
Like many young girls, posters of horses adorned my walls while several Breyer figurines sat on my bookshelf.
Each Christmas, I wrote a letter to Santa, wishing for a pony. I loved all animals and told everyone that I would be a veterinarian when I grew up. Yet, early adolescence altered my course. At the age of thirteen, a difficult battle with anorexia left me hospitalized and fighting for my life. The solitude and low self-esteem plagued most of my high school years. So much so that my Art teacher noticed my isolation and recommended me for a job. His wife managed a small natural food store a few miles from my family home.
I walked into my first interview as a naïve fifteen-year-old, drinking a diet soda and carrying a fast-food bag, what can only be described as a very unhealthy after-school snack. She hired me, not because of any knowledge of health, instead because of the referral. To my surprise, I spent the next ten years working my way from cashier into a managerial position. Like a duck to water, the health industry thrilled me, and I enjoyed learning it all. I spent a decade studying organic foods, supplements, herbs, and homeopathy.
I continued my education by earning a master’s degree of Acupuncture from Northwestern Health Sciences University in Minnesota. After graduating and moving to North Carolina, I worked for the prestigious Great Smokies Medical Center during my tenure in Asheville.
In November 2011, Andrew and I married and founded Fat Dog Farm in Tryon, NC. Our eighteen-acre homestead is the vision of my animal childhood dreams, coupled with my work and education in Traditional Medicines. The farm’s sustainability is a direct link to Andrew’s passions and his work in Renewable energies. Still, there is no denying the fact that two suburbanites started our first farm. With numerous failures and mishaps navigating city life to homesteading, the next adventure all but wrote itself!
Fat Dog Farm: Tails of Farm Failures is my memoir, chronicling the first six years living close to the land and care-taking livestock. With many excitements, sorrows, and fiascos, the journey revealed became the muse for my first book!
