From One Generation To The Next: Durnings Are The 2026 Franklin County Farm Family Of The Year
COMMUNITY FEATURE COVERAGE
by Janice Penix
For 25 years, Nick and Gina Durning have built their marriage and family around farming, though their operation has changed significantly since 2001.
After starting with cattle and a commercial turkey partnership with Nick’s father, they eventually phased out turkeys and expanded their herd. Six years ago, they added ownership of the I-40 Livestock Auction in Ozark to their workload, all while raising three children and managing their family farm.
Despite the changes they have endured, their commitment to family — and to creating a meaningful life for the next generation — remains unchanged.
Early Beginnings
Durning Farms is a 965-acre farm that includes two locations, one at the family home on New Hope Road north of Ozark and the other a few miles south, on Raney Road.
“I’ve been farming my whole life,” Nick said. “My dad lives down the road three miles from our home, and that’s where I was born and raised. I went to school at Tech for three semesters. I moved down there and stayed in the dorm for the first semester, and then came back home. I met Gina in 1999, and we got married in 2001.”
Nick graduated from Ozark High School in 1999 before attending Arkansas Tech University. Gina grew up south of Caulksville and attended school at County Line, so she didn’t meet Nick until they were teenagers.
“We got set up on a blind date, and 25 years later, here we are,” she said.
When the couple began helping with the Durning family turkey operation, Nick became the third generation to grow birds.
“My grandpa started growing turkeys for Butterball,” Nick said. “He built some houses and started raising them, and my dad, of course, had gotten into it, too. He built some houses and raised turkeys, and I was going to get into the turkey and cattle industry myself. So in 2006, we bought and took over a turkey farm from my dad.”
Nick and Gina raised turkeys on the Raney Road farm from 2006 until they moved to the property on New Hope Road almost 10 years later. The Durnings run around 600 head of tri-color stocker calves.
“We built this house,” Nick said. “But we were still raising turkeys down there east of Ozark when we built this. Then we switched farms. We moved out here, and started taking care of my dad. We had three units of turkeys down there, and we started taking care of two of the units out here. Then he hired somebody else to take care of the other unit, so that’s when we built. We wanted to build the house, because we wanted to be out here. We were back-and-forth, down there, out here. But we always had dreams of building this house on the land up here.
“My dad owns all this land right here around our house. We just own this house right here. Our farm five miles southeast of here is the only piece of ground we own. The rest of it, we just lease from him.”
Expanding Into New Territory
Nick and Gina, along with their partners, Sean and Tiffany Gattis, purchased the livestock auction barn from Ozark’s Kent Reading in 2020.
“It was scary because we bought it in the middle of COVID,” Gina said. “May 15, 2020, was our first sale.”
While Nick said the buying and selling aspect of the livestock business had crossed his mind in the past, becoming a part owner was not something he expected.
“I’d been interested in it before, but I never did think the opportunity would come,” he said. “The only good thing about buying during COVID was the interest was cheap.”
The business involves a lot of work, but thankfully the family has seen the investment pay off.
“It’s really beneficial for us,” Gina said. “Because when we sell cattle, we sell loads at a time, and we used to have to haul them out somewhere. Now, with what the guys are doing at the sale barn, we can sell them right there locally. We can hold them ourselves, feed them ourselves.”
Nick agreed.
“Nearly all of my cattle I bought there at the sale barn, and I turn around and sell them at the sale barn,” he said. “I buy them weighing 400, and I turn around and have got to get them weighing, my goal weight is around 800. It’s not a feed lot-type operation. I’ve got to utilize my grass and not have so much impact on my feed. I buy a lot in the fall, and then sell them in the next year. So I’ll keep them around nine months.”
Encountering Challenges
The Durnings face the same challenges as any other farm family, primarily weather and disease.
“A lot of what we do is dependent on the weather,” Gina said. “Too much rain is a bad thing. Not enough rain is a bad thing. We pray a lot, and God has been good. He’s blessed us. We couldn’t do what we do without him.”
Purchasing cattle at auction increases the risk for disease as well, Nick said.
“Every single hoof we buy comes from a sale barn,” he said. “Sometimes we buy from a local farmer, but 90% of them, we buy at the sale barn. So the challenge with that is disease. You don’t know where they come from, so one of the biggest challenges is keeping the incoming calves healthy and preventing them from being sick.”
The family juggled three enterprises – turkeys, cattle and the newly purchased auction barn – for about 18 months before getting out of the poultry business.
“It was nothing that we had done, as far as the turkey deal,” Nick said. “Butterball came out and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got too many farms, and y’all are raising turkeys in houses that are 42 years old. Your houses are the oldest houses.’ We understood. We had nine houses down at my dad’s, about three-and-a-half miles down the road, and we had three more houses at another farm down toward Altus. We had 12 houses, and me and Gina were taking care of half of them. We don’t miss it, except for the litter and the fertilizer.”
Everyone Pitches In
All of their children are a vital part of the operation, each with unique roles.
Their family includes daughter, Railey, 25, and sons Keystan, 23, and Payten, 22. Railey and her husband, Tanner Bryant, have a two-year-old daughter, Tayley, and another baby on the way. Keystan married his wife, Hailie, in June, and Payten and his wife, Annika, welcomed a son, Callen, on June 5.
“It takes a village to keep the wheels turning,” Gina said.
Nick agreed.
“Railey, my daughter, she helps at the sale barn, working with Gina,” he said. “Keystan, he works for my dad on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and on Wednesdays and Thursdays, he works for me at the sale barn. Then Payten works for my dad full-time. Payten and Keyston have some partnership cattle, I guess you can call it a family deal. And they each have their own set of cattle, too.”
Payten is a graduate of the Western College of Auctioneering in Bozeman, Mont., although he doesn’t utilize his vocal talents at the sale barn just yet.
“It wasn’t really something I’d always wanted to do, but whenever I was getting to my senior year of high school, I knew that I was going to want to pursue something,” Payten said. “I became really good friends with the auctioneer that was at the sale barn at the time, Kent, and he gave me the idea of doing it. Me and my friend decided that’s what we were going to do with our summer after we graduated, and so we went and did it.”
Auctioneer school began with an online course before Payten traveled to Montana for a four-day in-person class.
“It was tough,” he said. “It’s not as hard as you would think, it’s just a lot of practice. You’ve got to sit there and make yourself practice, and take it slow. The school instructors were really helpful, and the classes helped you with your rhythm and cadence.”
In Montana, he had the opportunity to observe professional, award-winning auctioneers.
“I met a couple of the guys when I was in school that have actually won nationals,” he said. “They were teaching a little bit, and they’d just come to help out. Some of those guys had actually graduated from that same school.”
Payten volunteers for area nonprofits who sponsor benefit auctions, including the Ozark Area Chamber of Commerce.
A graduate of Arkansas Tech University, Railey puts her talents to use helping her mom with the paperwork at the auction barn. During tax season, she also helps her aunt at Shirley’s Tax Service in Ozark.
“She works for Nick’s sister during tax season, but she helps me out at the sale barn every Thursday,” Gina said. “When it’s off-tax season, she helps me on the weekends, too. I’m the office manager there, and she helps me with different things.”
The business side of the sales keeps Gina busy, she said.
“I had no idea the amount of paperwork that would be involved,” Gina said, laughing. “It’s very much a business. Every single day, it’s keeping track of reports, or one payment or another. ‘Buy a sale barn,’ they said. ‘It’s great.’ But then let’s just throw Gina in here and say, ‘Take care of it.’ Yeah. I thank God for Clesha (Reading). She was amazing to help me, and I still call her with questions. She comes and helps me when things don’t balance, and she’ll sit there and go through things to help me.”
The couple said like most young kids, their children didn’t always enjoy work on the farm.
“There were lots of days they didn’t like it, because it’s 24/7, 365,” Gina said. “They really didn’t like the turkeys. It was 365 days a year, and you never got a day off.”
Nick said the holidays didn’t even afford his family a vacation, and his children’s friends quickly learned that hanging out too long at the Durnings might mean getting to assist with some of the farm chores.
“I mean, on Christmas morning, you got up, and what you want to do?,” he said. “I mean, we would do presents or whatever we were going to do for Christmas, but when they got done, we were going to the turkey house. It was to the point where, when they got older, their buddies were like, ‘Oh, we’re not staying out there with them,’ because they knew the work was there no matter what.”
But their sons said they are glad to be part of the family operation, especially Keystan, who works with his grandpa four days a week.
“It’s good,” he said. “You know, there are days when it’ll be hard, but, you know, in the end, I enjoy doing it. And he’s got a lot of experience, so I try to learn from him. I enjoy it a lot, and I plan to keep on doing it.”
Encouraging The Next Generation
As a third-generation farmer, Nick said seeing his own children involved in the family farm is rewarding.
“We hope that one day they’ll take it all over,” he said. “I guess the biggest goal is to build something for these kids to have a good start.”
He said there have been many benefits to raising his family in an agricultural environment.
“Teaching them hard work and respect, and just teaching them how to be good people,” Nick said. “I mean, the whole way through school, the boys played baseball, football, all of the sports. They had great work ethic. I coached them when I could, and I got to see how much other people were noticing our kids. I wouldn’t brag on my own kids, because we’re not like that, but even after they got to seventh grade and started school ball, people would say, ‘We wish all kids were like your kids. You all have done a really good job.’
“Our goal is to leave behind a legacy of hard work and pride for our kids and grandkids. Our accomplishment is that we have expanded our small operation into a successful business that we can leave behind to our children. We hope we have equipped future generations with the knowledge and tools to be even more successful.”
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Published In This Week’s Edition
This story appears in the July 15, 2026, edition of The Graphic, available online and at businesses throughout Johnson and Franklin counties.
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The Durning family includes (front row, from left) Railey Bryant, Gina Durning, Annika Durning, who is holding Callen Durning; (back row) Nick Durning, who is holding Tayley Bryant; Tanner Bryant, Keystan Durning and Payten Durning. Not pictured is Hailie Durning.
–Photo courtesy Sterling Penix
