Family: Wife Lynlee Franks; and children, Kallie and Jett.
Hometown: Siloam Springs, Ark.
In Town: “I am a cross country pipeline welder for oil and natural gas. I work through the pipeline Union 798 out of Tulsa, Okla. They get the jobs and dispatch me to wherever those jobs are. I started welding in the Navy in 1998 and began this position in 2007. I am gone for two to nine months without coming home to Siloam Springs and have worked in various places, such as South Dakota and West Virginia with the closest being Durant, Okla. My wife Lynlee previously worked for Cobb in Cincinnati, Ark., before staying home with our children and raising cattle.”
Country Life: “When home at Rockhill Ranch, I do side jobs as a farmhand. This includes tasks like building fence for others and working and hauling cattle. Whenever I can, I also help with our registered Simmental cattle. We started out by purchasing a Simmental show heifer for $850 from Lynlee’s father and mother, Terry and Carma Davis. That show heifer who was named Willow won grand champion at the Benton County Fair, as did her first calf Lucy. The next year Willow lost a calf but raised a bottle calf. When she didn’t breed back the following year, we sold her. We now have a total of six breeding females, two show heifers for Kallie this year and a young bull that Jett may show. We were very fortunate in buying our bull because we purchased him just before he won reserve champion at the Missouri State Fair in 2018. He is now producing his second round of calves. Kallie really enjoys showing, but loves a water fight at the fair even more. She also is very opposed to selling any of our animals, something she’ll have to get used to. Currently we reserve all of the show-quality heifers while selling bull calves as we try to build up our herd to perhaps 25 breeding females, about as much as my wife can handle with me gone so much. We use both spring and fall calving and feed Purina Show Chow twice a day, according to each individual’s needs. We have a good working relationship with our veterinarian and follow his health protocols. Farm kids work harder than other kids, and we want our children to have that kind of lifestyle. Kallie is already in both 4-H and FFA since students can enter FFA in the seventh grade. If Jett remains interested, he may also follow the same path.”
