{"id":108,"date":"2016-03-05T15:57:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-05T15:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/?page_id=108"},"modified":"2016-03-05T15:57:38","modified_gmt":"2016-03-05T15:57:38","slug":"about-us","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/?page_id=108","title":{"rendered":"About Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"smith<\/a><\/p>\n

Welcome! Ark Essentials had it’s beginnings in 1991. \u00a0John and I had a much smaller family back then and lived in Eugene, Oregon. \u00a0We bought our first home outside of the city limits, in a small cul de sac with a filbert orchard at the end of the lane and \u00a0a horse pasture just over our back fence. \u00a0We had chickens, raised rabbits and every time I turned around John had plowed up more grass and increased the size of our garden. \u00a0We began sharing our experiences of learning about homeschooling, using herbs, growing as much food as we could, preserving said food and trying to live as economically ( cheaply) as possible. \u00a0Ark Essentials started as our newsletter. We had to drive to the library to create our first very humble copies but kept publishing until the beginning of 2001.<\/p>\n

John Smith grew up in Portland, Oregon. \u00a0He was a cook for the Marine Corp. \u00a0After finishing his tour of duty he returned to Oregon and his brother ( also a former Marine) taught him the fine art of butchering. \u00a0The two of them cut a lot of meat and raised great tomatoes.<\/p>\n

Vickie grew up in Boise, Idaho. \u00a0She was the oldest of seven siblings. Due to her practical and frugal nature she graduated from Boise State University in three years debt free with a degree in education.<\/p>\n

John came to Utah scouting for a location for health food store and Vickie was in West Jordan, Utah teaching kindergarten. \u00a0After a long distance courtship they married and Vickie moved to Salem, Oregon where John was working for Albertsons cutting meat. \u00a0John was transferred to Eugene to manage the Springfield meat department.<\/p>\n

After 5 years in Eugene we moved back to Salem and bought a small mobile home on 3-1\/2 acres. \u00a0John was able to grow a huge garden. We raised dairy and cashmere goats and rabbits. \u00a0We experimented with a few cows and llamas and chickens. \u00a0Our filbert trees, raspberries and strawberries flourished as did our children. \u00a0As part of a ten year plan we built a beautiful house and then sold it to finance our move to Idaho.<\/p>\n

Currently we live in a small town in eastern Idaho. \u00a0John manages the local meat department and I work at our home based business and substitute teach on occassion.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome! Ark Essentials had it’s beginnings in 1991. \u00a0John and I had a much smaller family back then and lived in Eugene, Oregon. \u00a0We bought our first home outside of the city limits, in a small cul de sac with … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-108","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P1xN1t-1K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/108\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}