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John Asbury and his family know a thing or two about hard work.
The Asbury family — John, wife Anna, sons John Jr. and Andrew, daughter Mitzi Heithaus and their spouses and children — operate three farms in Oak Grove, working together on more than 1,000 acres. The Asburys run 300 beef cattle, raise more than 369,000 chickens yearly for Tyson Foods and maintain 140 acres of hayfields. As if that wasn’t enough, the Asburys also own and operate an excavation company.
The hard work hasn’t gone unnoticed. The Asbury family has been named the Arkansas Farm Bureau’s 2025 Carroll County Farm Family of the Year.
It’s an honor that John Asbury says came as a surprise.
“I never did expect it,” he said. “Like I told my wife, there’s lots of other people, other guys that deserve it, too. Every farmer deserves it.
“It needs to be more than just one a year,” Asbury said. “It needs to be one a month. Farming is what made this country. Every bit of it. There wasn’t anything here in the late ’60s but farms.”
The Asbury farm started in 1968, operated by John Asbury’s father.
“The original farm was 113 acres operated by my dad and then passed on to me,” Asbury said. “We have been able to increase to 1,900 combined operational acres between the three farms.”
The Asburys have raised chickens for Tyson since 1998. John worked in maintenance at Tyson’s Berryville plant for 20 years.
“I actually went back to the night shift and did chickens days here,” he said. “I’d come home and the first thing I’d do is do chickens. I’d get off a 5 o’clock in the morning and come home and do the chickens and get that done and I’d lay down for four or five hours.
Asbury said he didn’t mind the long hours.
“It didn’t bother me,” he said. “I was young.”
Now that he works exclusively on the farm, John Asbury is able to devote more time to it, which has helped expand the operation.
He said he’s doing exactly what he always dreamed of.
“Farming was just always a part of my life,” he said. “I grew up on a farm and after taking FFA in high school, I knew that is what I wanted to do and have my kids have the same experiences that I did. Even though the work can be hard and days long, at the end of the day you feel like you have accomplished something.”
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