Horse Pen Ranch Chuckwagon

08/13/2024

Check out our new video. Raw Apple Cake. This one is simple and delicious!

Aunt Wanetta’s Raw Apple Cake2 cups flour2 Cups Sugar1/2 teaspoon salt2 teaspoon cinnamon 2 teaspoon baking soda Mix dry ingredients together Then add1 stick...

07/14/2024

We finally have a new video up. It’s a good one. Let me know what you think!

Dutch Oven Blueberry Cobbler For the fruit 3 cups of fresh or , frozen blueberries 1/4 cup of granulated sugarOne lemon zest splash of lemon juice the batt...

06/13/2024

Go get some top notch coffee and an awesome mug for your pops on Fathers Day!

06/06/2024

Marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day, we remember with reverence the bold and selfless individuals who fought to preserve our sacred liberties on the sands of Normandy.

03/26/2024

Several of my close chuck wagon buddies, including Grady, were featured in the news!

If you can boil water, you can make potatoes, but that’s just the start.

03/23/2024

We are set up at the Chisholm Trail Museum in Kingfisher. Come see us tomorrow from 10 to 2 and will serve you some good cowboy cuisine! https://www.facebook.com/share/SSuDuo5ifKVNK3TP/?mibextid=9l3rBW

03/09/2024

We had an incredible time at the Wagons For Veterans event in Texarkana, Texas. We enjoyed making Pozola and peach cobbler all from scratch.

03/08/2024

Drop by and see us at this wonderful event. Lots of fun and food!

03/06/2024

Our coffee is now available online. It’s a perfect medium roast coffee!

Medium Roast Blend of Brazil and Guatemala This is the signature coffee blend used by chuckwagon cook Justin Jackson of Horse Pen Ranch in Southeastern Oklahoma. He is best known for cooking over the coals and serving up coffee the old fashioned way. You can catch his cowboy cooking demonstrations

01/13/2024

We have a new video up on YouTube! Thanks for watching.

3 pounds of white beansCover with water or chicken broth if using water use chicken bouillon Add salt and pepper and bring to a boil Add 2 pounds of cut u...

12/28/2023

We have a new video up. Thanks for watching!!
https://youtu.be/f4FP2xK0hhA?si=IYSDIxlX8H5YczKL

12/17/2023

Happy Sunday!

11/22/2023

We have a new video up on YouTube. Happy Thanksgiving!
https://youtu.be/3uSKkt31tmg?si=qCdOCvVXy_E7UmAn

11/21/2023

This is a great recipe for Thanksgiving day. Y’all check it out. The recipe is in the description of the video.

INGREDIENTS:1 large pan of cornbread 1 pound sausage1 large onion, diced3-4 celery stalks, diced (about 2 cups)1/2 cup butter (1 stick)2 cups chicken or turk...

11/10/2023

New video is up on YouTube. Click on the link and check it out. This is a great one for the holidays.
https://youtu.be/HQ588xnpih0?si=8qfRTGm-pPmvZak-

11/09/2023

I’ve read “We Pointed Them North” several times. It’s worth the read. Teddy Blue Abbott was a legendary cow man!

The Texas Quote of the Day was written by Teddy Blue Abbott, the young cowboy shown in this photo, and it is a GREAT one:

"There were worlds of cattle in Texas after the Civil War. They had multiplied and run wild while the men was away fighting for the Confederacy, especially down in the southern part, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. By the time the war was over they was down to four dollars a head -- when you could find a buyer. Here was all these cheap, long-horned steers overrunning Texas; here was the rest of the country crying for beef -- and no railroads to get them out. So they trailed them out, across hundreds of miles of wild country thick with Indians. In 1866 the first Teas herds crossed the Red River. In 1867 the town of Abilene was founded at the end of the Kansas Pacific Railroad and that was when the trail really started. From that time on the big drives were made every year, and the cowboy was born...

Those first tail outfits in the seventies were sure tough. It was a new business and had to develop. Work oxen were used instead of horses to pull the wagon, and if one played out, they could rope a steer and yoke him up. They had very little grub and they usually ran out of that and lived off of straight beef. They had only three or four horses to the man, mostly with sore backs, because the old-time saddle ate both ways, the horse's back and the cowboy's pistol pocket. They had no tents, no tarps and damn few slickers. They never kicked, because those boys was raised under just the same conditions as there was on the trail -- corn meal and bacon for grub, dirt floors in the houses and no luxuries. In the early days in Texas, in the sixties, then they gathered their cattle, they used to pack what they needed on a horse and go out for weeks on a cow hunt they called it then. That was before the name roundup was invented, and before they had anything so civilized as mess wagons. And I say, that is the way those first trail hands were raised. Take her as she comes and like it. They used to brag that they could go anyplace a cow could and a stand anything a horse could. It was their life.

Most all of them were Southerners, and they were a wild, reckless bunch. For dress they wore wide-brimmed beaver hats, black or brown with a low crown, fancy shirts, high-heeled boots and sometimes a vest. Their clothes and saddles were all homemade. Most of them had an army coat with cape, which was a slicker and blanket, too. Lay on your saddle blanket and cover up with a coat was about the only bed used on the Texas trail at first. A few had a big buffalo robe to rollup in, but if they ever got good and wet you never had time to dry them, so they were not popular, All had a pair of bullhide chaps, or leggings they called them then. They were good in the brush and wet weather, but in fine weather were left in the wagon."

----- E.C. "Teddy Blue" Abbott, "We Pointed Them North," 1939. Teddy Blue was 18 years old and had already spent several years in the saddle when this photo photo was taken. He had been born in Cranwich, England in 1860, and was brought to the West by his parents as a boy. The Abbotts settled in Lincoln, Nebraska at a time when the region was overrun with Texas cattle and cowboys heading north on trail drives. Teddy Blue's father decided to try his luck in the booming business and bought cattle from Texas. Teddy , only 10 years old, when he first became a trail cowboy, went to Texas and was allowed to help herd them to Nebraska in hopes that the open air would improve his frail health. The experience, Abbott said later, "made a cowboy out of me. Nothing could have changed me after that." Teddy Blue worked on the range throughout the 1870s and 1880s. His memoirs of cowboy life -- from the dangerous trail drives to the off-season shenanigans in town -- was published in 1939 and, on account of its honesty and the fact that it dealt with quite a few mature, "adult" themes, marked a new era in the historiography of the Old West. It's clear to me when I read "Lonesome Dove" that Larry McMurtry was well-acquainted with Teddy's autobiography!

11/07/2023

Come try our CowPuncher Coffee at Revamp Ranch in downtown Poteau.

10/26/2023

Happy birthday to my #1 hand on the wagon. I’m EXTREMELY proud of you Grady. I hope you have a wonderful day. Love you bub!

10/23/2023

Buttermilk Biscuits are on the menu this morning in Cowboy Camp Silver Dollar City.

10/22/2023

Getting coals ready to bake some pumpkin pecan bread pudding at Silver Dollar City. Come get you a sample at 1:30.

10/19/2023

Only nine days left for us at Silver Dollar City’s harvest festival. Come by and see us and try some good cowboy chuck and hot coffee on the house.

10/17/2023

Did you know the historic Chisholm Trail runs through the entirety of Stuart Ranch in Waurika, OK? Most notably, Monument Hill is located toward the north side of the ranch, and Lookout Point (pictured here) is just west of Monument Hill.

We see it as an honor to work cattle on the same land that helped mold the cowboy! Here’s what the inscription at the Lookout Point monument reads:

“Chisholm Trail Lookout Point. This site was given by Henry and Blanche Price in honor of the Pickens County Cowpunchers Association and all other cowboys and pioneers that used this trail.

Millions of longhorns were driven northward across the plains to railheads in Kansas during the period 1867-1889. The great cattle drives not only helped to feed a nation just after the Civil War, they produced one of the nation’s most enduring heroes - the cowboy. The brief era of the open range and free grass generated the greatest cattle boom in world history. This hill was a landmark for drovers who rode northward from Red River to a campsite nearby.

The wagon tracks of Jesse Chisholm (1806-1868) across Indian territory become known as Chisholm’s Trail and Texas cowmen using this route gave his name to the entire cattle trail from south Texas to Kansas. The Cherokee - Scot Trader was known to Indians as an honest and trustworthy man - a reputation that served his country well. In his activities as an interpreter and peace “negotiator” with the Indians.

Hardships tested the mettle of men on the trail. Severe weather at times made conditions hazardous as well as miserable, and there was always the threat of stampedes caused by a bolt of lightning, a loud clap of thunder, or the trickery of raiders. The scattering of cattle meant that there would be no rest for the drovers until the strays were rounded up.”

10/14/2023

It’s Chili day in Cowboy Camp at Silver Dollar City .Serving it up at 3 pm.

10/09/2023

10/05/2023

Doing a little dutch oven cooking today at Silver Dollar City. Granny cake, and dutch oven biscuits.