LARA JO HIGHTOWER/Special to the Free Weekly
On June 2 and 3, a huge field on the outskirts of Prairie Grove will hold the largest selection of open-air flea market booths in the Northwest Arkansas area. From polished antiques to funky vintage treasures to rusty farm finds, shoppers should be rewarded with just about anything they’re looking for at the Junk Ranch, which boasts 150 vendors and more than 200 booths.
We asked a few vendors what they’re bringing to the event, how they got involved in junking, and what their best find ever was.
Don Wilkinson
Don Wilkinson found his way to junking the way a lot of vendors do: he kept finding great stuff while shopping for his own collection of vintage Speas Vinegar bottles. So when he retired in his mid-50s after 35 years with the Arkansas Highway Department, he threw his hat into the flea market ring and got a booth at one of the largest flea markets in the country in Canton, Texas. After 10 years of selling at Canton, he moved up to an even bigger venue — Round Top, Texas, the Holy Grail of flea markets.
“It was a lot of work on my part,” he says. “We would haul seven or eight trailer loads down between shows, store them, and then we’d go down and set up and stay two weeks, selling. We sold to people from everywhere — California and everywhere. They got to buying from me, and they actually got to buying too much. It became too much of a job, and age took over.”
Wilkinson is 85 now, and he was thrilled when the Junk Ranch opened up so near his home in Mountainburg. Though the main product he sells are chicken laying houses — he estimates he’s sold around 30,000 over the course of his junking career — the booth he runs with his son is an eclectic mix of auction, estate and farm sale finds.
Wilkinson’s best find ever was deceptively simple: a box full of old bottle caps.
“I told my wife, ‘I found the Holy Grail,’” he remembers. “They were unused, cork-lined Dr Pepper bottle caps from 1907. The first bottle caps ever used on a Dr Pepper bottle.”
When he put them on eBay, he says, “people went crazy.”
Stacey Murphy
The Weathered Pearl
Stacey Murphy’s relationship with the Junk Ranch started off as a shopper.
“I loved the eclectic mix of old, used, collectible items and the vendor inspired pieces! I thought to myself, ‘I could do this,’” she recalls. “I applied the next year, and junk has been my livelihood ever since.”
Murphy advises yard sale shoppers to look for the signs with a torn piece of cardboard with the word “sale” scribbled across it as a marker.
“Often these sales are not advertised on social media, so it increases your chances of finding a hidden treasure,” she says.
She also hits the widely advertised sales, like the Oklahoma 100-mile Yard Sale. That’s where she found her favorite find: a 13-foot late 1800s banquet table discovered in a barn in Cleveland, Okla.
“I have done several shows all over Oklahoma and Arkansas, and I would say what sets the Junk Ranch apart from the others is the venue itself, the friendly vendors, the amazing shoppers, but most of all how well [Junk Ranch founders] Amy [Daniels] and Julie [Speed] have it organized,” Murphy says.
Tracy Davis
Rusty Heart Relics
“I have always loved old things as long as I can remember,” says Tracy Davis of Rusty Heart Relics. “My mama had an eye for the ornate and passed it along to me. We spent many a weekend traveling the roads for that elusive treasure.”
For her booth, she stocks a wide variety of items.
“I love vintage and antique garden items, primitive and antique furniture, and holiday decor,” she says. “I loved MCM before it was cool.”
Her favorite find is an antique child’s bedroom suite she found at the famed Texas flea market Round Top.
“It is a beautiful faded robin’s egg blue with a painted design, and it’s to die for,” she says.
Davis has had a love affair with the Junk Ranch since the first year.
“From the live music and food trucks to the mountains of treasures and lovely vendors, I knew this was the show that I wanted to be a part of,” she says. “Amy and Julie are the best and treat us like family.”
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FAQ
Junk Ranch
WHEN — 9 a.m.-3 pm. June 2; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. June 3; tickets go on sale at 8 a.m.
WHERE — 11195 Centerpoint Church Road in Prairie Grove
COST — $10
INFO — thejunkranch.net
An auction was Junk Ranch founder Amy Daniels’ gateway drug into serious junking. She can’t remember what inspired the trip out to a farm sale with her sister Holly, but once she was there, she was hooked.

“I think I just learned about them, that there were good deals, and it was something I had never done, so I thought, ‘Let’s go do this,’” she remembers. “I think the first thing I bought at an auction was a pretty ratty quilt.”
Flea markets and tag, estate and yard sale addiction soon followed.
“I remember the first time I learned about haggling,” she says, laughing. “One of the first things that I haggled on was a $1 item. I look back at that now and think: ‘I would have run me off!’ But I did get it for 50 cents.”
Daniels’ parents-in-law owned an antique store, so it didn’t seem odd when Daniels started moving in the direction of selling as well as buying.
“I just kept going, and just like everybody else, you start sifting out things that you’re not interested in, or you buy things that you get by the boxful, and then you’re like, ‘What am I going to do with all of this?’” she says. “So I had a tent sale at my sister’s house: We set up a big tent, rented a bunch of tables — it was kind of crazy. I think we maybe broke even.”
That tent sale may have been the birth of the idea that would eventually become the Junk Ranch. Eight years ago, Daniels tried a tent sale on a bigger scale at the Viney Grove Community Building in Prairie Grove, and the huge positive response both overwhelmed and energized her. She and her Junk Ranch partner, Julie Speed, searched until they found the exact right venue to expand the event; these days, it’s held on farm land on the outskirts of Prairie Grove and is Northwest Arkansas’ largest open-air flea market, attracting thousands of people to the area and boosting the local economy for two weekends a year. When the gates open on Oct. 1 for the fall show, eager shoppers will find more than 200 booths selling anything from rusty barn finds to polished antiques — and everything in between. Ten food trucks and live music add to the county fair-like atmosphere, which attracts avid vintage shoppers on a mission, as well as families, with kids and pets in tow, looking for a laid-back, fun afternoon.
On the phone two weeks before the sale starts, Daniels sounds calm and organized, despite the huge to-do list in front of her. Over the next week-and-a-half, she has to finalize the vendor layout, mark it on the grounds, brush hog the field, get the barn cleared and get the parking area ready — and tackle the myriad of last-minute emergencies that inevitably crop up in the run-up to an event this size. It’s a lot of work, but it’s that kind of hard work that led her to producing one of the biggest flea market events in the state.
“I think everything is about timing in life,” she says. “You take little things away from everything you do until you end up with the timing to put everything together. You have a vision and a plan, but sometimes it takes a little bit of time to baby-step your way to it.”
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Vendor Spotlight

Amanda and Jimmy Armstrong
Funky Junk Antiques
Amanda Armstrong had been a single mom for years when she agreed to accompany her oldest daughter to church one Sunday morning. Out of the blue, she says, a man sat down in the pew next to her.
“Jimmy plopped down beside me, and he said, ‘Is this seat taken?’” she remembers, laughing. “I was like, ‘What?’”
Maybe Jimmy had an instinct that the two would hit it off. Amanda was a junker at heart, and Jimmy owned a pawn shop — this year marks his 40th year in business — so the couple had a lot in common right off the bat.
“It was just meant to be,” says Amanda. “He said, ‘I’ve never had this much fun doing this before,’ and I said, ‘Well, my [first] husband never liked junking ,’ so it was almost like a meant-to-be thing.”
At the time, Amanda was styling hair for a living, but when the two realized they worked well in the junking arena together, they started a flea market booth at the Midtown Mall in Little Rock. That one booth turned into two, then three, then steadily expanded over the years. Today, the pair own and operate Funky Town Mall in Russellville, a flea market with more than 80 vendors, and sell at several shows like Junk Ranch throughout the year. They also travel to dozens of states to shop at flea markets there.
“We have a smorgasbord of things,” Amanda says of what shoppers can expect to find in their Junk Ranch booth. “We have mid-century modern, we have primitive, we have antique, farmhouse, antique hunting supplies, belt buckles, groovy lamps, collectible pocket knives, furniture, couches; vintage, antique, retro, primitive, mid-century, shabby chic, man cave, farmhouse — I’ve brought just about everything over the years.”
She says that’s one of the things she loves about the Junk Ranch: You can find just about anything there.
“The Junk Ranch does a great job of picking vendors to cover wants and needs and desires that shoppers are looking for,” she notes. “Shoppers are looking for everything — they don’t just want T-shirts or furniture or painted signs. They want everything.”
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FAQ

The Junk Ranch
WHEN — 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Oct. 1; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Oct. 2
WHERE — 11195 Centerpoint Church Rd., Prairie Grove
COST — $5-$10
INFO — thejunkranch.net