{"id":111,"date":"2016-03-05T17:16:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-05T17:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/?p=111"},"modified":"2022-08-11T17:19:49","modified_gmt":"2022-08-11T17:19:49","slug":"about-us-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/?p=111","title":{"rendered":"About Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_107\" class=\"thumbnail wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"width: 300px\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.arkessentials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/smith-A-2013.jpeg.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-107\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-107\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.arkessentials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/smith-A-2013.jpeg.jpg?resize=300%2C168\" alt=\"John Smith Family 2013\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.arkessentials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/smith-A-2013.jpeg.jpg?resize=300%2C168&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.arkessentials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/smith-A-2013.jpeg.jpg?resize=768%2C429&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.arkessentials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/smith-A-2013.jpeg.jpg?w=800&amp;ssl=1 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"caption wp-caption-text\">John Smith Family 2013<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Welcome! Ark Essentials had it\u2019s beginnings in 1991. &nbsp;John and I had a much smaller family back then and lived in Eugene, Oregon. &nbsp;We 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 &nbsp;a horse pasture just over our back fence. &nbsp;We had chickens, raised rabbits and every time I turned around John had plowed up more grass and increased the size of our garden. &nbsp;We 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. &nbsp;Ark 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<p>John Smith grew up in Portland, Oregon. &nbsp;He was a cook for the Marine Corp. &nbsp;After finishing his tour of duty he returned to Oregon and his brother ( also a former Marine) taught him the fine art of butchering. &nbsp;The two of them cut a lot of meat and raised great tomatoes.<\/p>\n<p>Vickie grew up in Boise, Idaho. &nbsp;She 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<p>John came to Utah scouting for a location for health food store and Vickie was in West Jordan, Utah teaching kindergarten. &nbsp;After a long distance courtship they married and Vickie moved to Salem, Oregon where John was working for Albertsons cutting meat. &nbsp;John was transferred to Eugene to manage the Springfield meat department.<\/p>\n<p>After 5 years in Eugene we moved back to Salem and bought a small mobile home on 3-1\/2 acres. &nbsp;John was able to grow a huge garden. We raised dairy and cashmere goats and rabbits. &nbsp;We experimented with a few cows and llamas and chickens. &nbsp;Our filbert trees, raspberries and strawberries flourished as did our children. &nbsp;As part of a ten year plan we built a beautiful house and then sold it to finance our move to Idaho.<\/p>\n<p>Currently we live in a small town in eastern Idaho. &nbsp;John manages the local meat department and I work at our home based business and substitute teach on occassion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome! Ark Essentials had it\u2019s beginnings in 1991. &nbsp;John and I had a much smaller family back then and lived in Eugene, Oregon. &nbsp;We bought our first home outside of the city limits, in a small cul de sac with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/?p=111\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.arkessentials.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/smith-A-2013.jpeg.jpg?fit=800%2C447&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1xN1t-1N","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"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=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5170,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/5170"}],"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=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkessentials.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}