Cooking in the West

Covid 19 effectively ended our ranch vacation business when all of our summer guests cancelled during the spring of 2020. The silver lining of the pandemic was we found that it was much easier just to rent out cabins than offer guests a full-fledged ranch experience. During our years of hosting ranch vacations, we hosted several travel writers and journalists. I recently found this column written by a New Jersey journalist, Erin Boyle, who visited the ranch with her Northern Irish friends, Cathy and Jules. The following is Erin’s account of moving cattle to a forest permit up Bear Canyon south of Bozeman.

I am tense on my horse, Shine, but trying not to be. Above me, cattle are bawling as they slide down the mountainside. They are on the ledge right above me. I look to my right. Only a sheer drop. I look to my left. I see the side of the mountain that the cattle are sliding down. Back, behind me, three U.S. Forest Service employees sent to help push the cattle up the mountainside have wisely vanished back down the trail to safety, and there’s only a twisting, steep mountain path, cut out beside the mountain ahead of me.

I look up and see the cattle. Unhappy to be treading a new path engineered by the U.S. Forest Service in Bear Canyon, they’re bawling and trying to push back down the trail that they have just been driven up. They do not want to turn a switchback, walk up the path that they are now sliding down, turn another switchback–this one sharp–and climb another steep grade. They want to go up the “decommissioned” trail up the creek bottom as herds owned by the Hoell/Metcalf family have done for literally over a hundred years. Frustrated at first, their cries are now turning frantic. They are falling as they push back, and they are getting dangerously close to my head in all of this. I suddenly notice how bloody big the things are.

“This is bad,” I say aloud. “I’ve seen enough Western films to know this has got to be bad!” I sound calm; however, I don’t feel calm. My pulse begins to race. As a journalist, I’ve been in enough frightening experiences to know this one ranks pretty darn high on the scary meter. In fact, it’s ranking... highest ever. And trust me, with my career as a New Jersey newspaper reporter, that’s not easy.

My friend, Cathy, is on the horse, Scooter, that is right in front of Shine. She turns to me, her white cowgirl hat twisting at an odd angle and nods. She’s wearing sunglasses, and so am I, but our eyes somehow meet anyway.

Then a log slides down the mountainside right between the legs of Jerry, the horse in front of Cathy’s. Jerry is being ridden by our friend, Jules, who is also from Northern Ireland.

That’s when things begin happening quickly. Dust and dirt is flying down on me as the cattle are steadily sliding down, people are crying out, Jerry turns, Scooter turns, and Cathy’s voice is panicked as she says, “Susan says, let’s go.”

Susan is Susan Metcalf, our hostess at the Metcalf Ranch. We are helping drive her in-law’s, Roy and Carol Metcalf’s, cows to their forest permit pasture in the mountains. After riding two days with Susan, I know that what Susan says, you heed. You heed it like your life depends on it. At that moment, I felt sure that mine did.

My horse turns then, his head toward the bottom of the mountain, though I hadn’t told him to do a thing. He only knows, instinctively, to clear out of there too. I have never wanted to kiss a horse so much in my life as I did then.

There is more shouting, the cattle are slipping and struggling, and I hold off a moment more. I judge the scene. Do I take off and save myself? Or do I stay a moment more and hold the cattle back? Well I am a Jersey Girl, and it takes more than mere risk of life to drive us off--or else we wouldn’t persist in visiting urban war zones known as East Coast cities and refusing to learn how to pump our own gas because, well, we don’t have to in NJ.

I hold out, the crisis passes, and the Forest Service employees and our riders finally succeed in turning the cattle and forcing them up the steep trail. Crying out, the cattle mount the second hill, and dust is flying, but I’m alive. So is Cathy. We are shaken, but we are uncrushed and unstampeded.

Shine knows the danger has passed. He turns in the tiniest space I have ever seen a horse turn in my life. I lean down and pat the dear thing like patting is going out of style.

We ride in silence, driving the cattle up the mountain, and when we are done shaking, Cathy calls back to me in her lilting Northern Irish accent, “We did so well! We should be proud of ourselves, so we should!”

And she’s right, our Cathy. For whoever would have thought that a Jersey girl and a Northern Irish girl would find themselves in Montana, playing proper cowgirls to the point of having cattle nearly falling on our heads and rushing us the wrong way with us holding our ground?

Maybe us, all along. But I’d best tell you the story of Cathy and me first. When I was 11 years old, I wrote my first letter to Cathy Gaston. She was also 11. I lived in New Jersey, and she lived in Northern Ireland. Her mum was my aunt’s pen pal, and had been since childhood – it was my aunt who asked her mum to have one of her children write to me. That child turned out to be Cathy.

Her first letter to me began “My full name is Catherine Agnes Gaston although I am called Cathy for short,” and thus started a lively, nearly 20-year handwritten correspondence through the mail.

Many people, upon hearing our story, have told me that they had pen pals, too–in second grade, say, from some foreign country. The letter writing lasted a little while and gradually ended when the novelty wore off. I had pen pals like that too, but Cathy and I were different. We were joined by her mum and my aunt. We discovered parallel connections in our lives including how we were both country girls who loved horses and were the oldest in large families.

We wrote through everything to each other: school, university, first jobs, first loves. Every year in December, no matter what was happening in our lives, we sat down on opposite sides of the ocean and wrote long handwritten letters to each other. Yet we had never heard each other’s voice, accent, or even seen many photos. We didn’t communicate via e-mail, instant messenger, or text messaging, either. We had certainly never met. We just had a connection through the written word.

Then, my grandmother died when I was in my mid-20s. It made me realize how short life is. It also made me think about how my other grandmother, who died when I was in my teens, had a life-long pen pal in Australia that she had always wanted to visit. She died of breast cancer before she had a chance. I decided I would not be robbed of that chance.

One week after my grandmother’s death, I booked a flight to Ireland. Meeting Cathy for the first time–on the side of a road in Northern Ireland–was an experience unlike any I had ever before experienced. It like those letters from my childhood came to life.

After that, Cathy and I became fast friends. This winter, Cathy, a school teacher, decided to spend the entire summer in the U.S., bringing her friend, Julie “Jules” Elliot, with her. Cathy had a list of things she has always wanted to do (not a bucket list, mind you, just a paper list). Visit the U.S. was at the top of her list. Right below it was work on a real western ranch and ride horseback every day.

So I researched ranching vacations and happened upon Montana Bunkhouses. The rest, as they say, is history. What great history it was. Our stay at Lower Deer Creek Ranch was more than we thought it would be–more amazing, more scary, more perfect, more relaxing than we could have imagined. The Metcalfs took us right into their homes and lives, and we became just three members of their extended family. We drove cattle with them, we ate delicious meals with them, we sat in the bleachers of a professional bull riding event with them, we had picnics in the woods with them, we nearly ran out of gas in cars with them. . .

When we reached the meadow that day at Bear Canyon after the near-cattle-avalanche with them, I was never so happy to see a clearing in my life as I was then. I dismounted my horse and called to Cathy, “You OK?” And she was, because it can take a lot to faze a Jersey girl and a Northern Irish girl who have been pen pals practically forever!

My featured cook this week is Barb Berklund of Park City, Montana. Thanks, Barb!

Fluffy Wuffy

1/4 C. butter or margarine

3 eggs

2 C. milk

2 T. sugar

3/4 t. salt

1 C. flour

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Melt butter in 9x13 pan. Mix remaining ingredients in blender and pour over melted butter. Bake 20-25 minutes until lightly browned and puffed. Serves 4-8. May serve with maple syrup, cinnamon and sugar or just plain. (This is a breakfast dish, but we frequently made it for supper.)

Chicken Strips

Cut as many chicken breasts as you want into strips. Put into appropriate dish or in a large zip-lock bag and fill with buttermilk just to coat well. Let sit for 1/2 to 1 hour. Drain well and discard buttermilk. Then using a clean zip-lock bag, shake the pieces lightly in flour, then dip in beaten egg to coat each piece well. Then roll in crushed Italian Bread Crumbs and coat well. Lay in baking sheets and bake 40 minutes or till done at 350 to375 degrees.

Frozen Ice Cream Dessert

19-oz. pkg Oreo cookies

1/2 C. butter

1/2 gallon vanilla ice cream

12 oz. Spanish peanuts

2 C. powdered sugar

1 1/2 C. evaporated(not sweetened condensed) milk

1/2 C. butter

2/3 C. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Crush cookies, mix with 1/2 C. softened butter. Pat into 9x13 pan. Freeze. Slice vanilla ice cream and pat onto crust. Top ice cream with peanuts. Freeze again. On stove over medium heat, combine powdered sugar, evaporated milk, butter, and chips. Bring to a boil. Boil 8 minutes. (It will look a bit curdly). Remove from heat and let set for 1 hour. Pour over frozen layers and return to freezer. Remember to take out of freezer at least 20-30 minutes ahead of serving for ease of cutting.