King of the Road - September 2010
Full to the Brim in the Big Empty
Chow down at Harding County's cowboy cookoff
Story and Photography by Lesley S. King
As I make my way across the high prairie of eastern New Mexico, en route to the town of Mosquero, I’m reminded of lines from “The Big Empty,” a poem by area resident Bob Bachen: “We offer you nothing. / No noise, / No pollution, / No traffic. / Harding County, no place like it.” Bachen, who owns Wagon Mound Ranch Supply, wrote this bit of verse about New Mexico’s least populated county, which boasts only three people per square mile. His poetic musings capture the region so well they’ve been used in magazines to encourage visitors to come.
As I gaze across hundreds of miles of open prairie, I acknowledge that this area lives up to its nickname, The Big Empty. But along the side of the road a herd of antelope grazes, and a red-tailed hawk circles above. Clearly, as Bachen’s poem illustrates, the area is full of life’s subtle beauties.
IF YOU GO WHAT TO DO & WHERE TO SHOP For info about Harding County: WHERE TO EAT Solanofest VI WHERE TO STAY The Rectory
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I’m headed for the nearby village of Solano for the Solanofest, a day celebrating music, cooking, and art. But before I get there, I meet Donna Hazen on Mosquero’s main street. In the past few years this little ranching town of some 81 residents, on N.M. 39, 164 miles east of Santa Fe, has received a full face-lift, thanks to the help of Hazen and others. Students she teaches at Mosquero Public Schools, along with area painter Doug Quarles, have illustrated the town’s stories, both past and present, on murals that adorn the general store, restaurant, and bar; more murals are in the works.
“We’ve got a lot of rich history here,” says Hazen as she shows me around. Indeed, the town began in 1906, with the construction of the 146-mile Dawson Railway. Later, in the 1920s and ’30s, settlers prospered from the production of dry ice at the Bravo Dome carbon-dioxide field. And throughout its history, up to the present, Mosquero, whose name is Spanish for “swarm of flies or mosquitos,” has been a center for cattle ranching.
But it’s time for me to head a few miles west, to Solano. The jewel of the village is the stone Union Church (1912), one of a number of such structures gracing these plains. Nearby, Wagon Mound Ranch Supply occupies a stone structure built as a schoolhouse in 1911. It’s full of such ranch necessities as horse feed and barbed wire, but also a wide array of goods, including campfire cookware, Western books, cowboy scarves, and lariats in periwinkle blue, sea green, and pink.
Already, the store and the grounds around it are filling with visitors and cooks attending the Solanofest; the highlight of the day is a Dutch-oven cookoff in which 11 teams will compete. Later, we’ll feast on the entries along with baked brisket, a staple of the plains. I track down Bob Bachen near the dance floor, where a band of fiddlers plays and guests two-step. “This all started because I really like music and Dutch-oven cooking, and thought it was a great way to invite folks to Harding County,” he says.
A few steps away, under a canvas shelter, the sisters Jean Cates and Sue Cunningham, professional Dutch-oven cooks, demonstrate how to make biscuits and cobbler. “The real secret is distributing the heat right,” says Cates as she sets the round cast-iron pot in a fiery pit and shovels coals atop the lid. With their teaching, the sisters help carry on a tradition brought to the West by early settlers, and still used on ranches today during cattle-branding season. Meanwhile, all around the grounds, cowboys and cowgirls work over fires, preparing their contest entries.
This is where being a writer for New Mexico Magazine really pays off—everyone wants me to taste their food. So I make my way around. At the fire of the local Triangle Ranch, I eat a moist biscuit with just the right amount of sugar and salt. One team member, Jill Chatfield, used to cook on the famed Bell Ranch, south of here. “These contests are great because the whole family gets involved, and they learn a lot about history and how their great-grandpa likely did this.” Indeed, two Triangle Ranch team members are kids. Today, Sherry Ray and John David Chatfield have cooked up their own cobbler, and of course I must have a taste.
I cruise by other camps. Folks from Snyder, Texas, offer me a sample of their potatoes with the savory sweetness of onions, and then the Rafter GT team from Clayton gives me some cobbler that just might be a winner. Back at the main tent, sisters Jean and Sue insist that I taste one of their specialties: apricot biscuits. “Maybe I should have just a little more, to be sure I can really describe this,” I venture.
Feeling full much earlier than I’d intended to, I waddle over to some booths where vendors are displaying handmade soaps, horseshoe sculptures, and saddles. A tarot-card reader offers to foretell my future, but after all I’ve eaten, I fear it might involve a new career as a sumo wrestler. So when a dinner bell is rung, signaling that the cookoff results are in, I head back to the store.
Before Jean Cates announces the winners, she explains what she and the other judges have found: “It was real close. Some of the cobbler could use a little more sugar, some of the potatoes could use more salt. But overall, the entries were real tasty.” Prizes go to: the Rocky Top Ramblers, from Hereford, Texas, for their potatoes; Rafter GT, of Clayton, for their cobbler; and home team Triangle Ranch, for those amazing biscuits I tried.
In the golden light of dusk, everyone sits down to feast on the bounty. Although I’m now likely the fullest person in The Big Empty, I manage to enjoy some brisket and coleslaw—and, of course, more biscuits, potatoes, and cobbler. As I depart these high plains, another of Bob Bachan’s verses comes to mind: “See the stars, hear the quiet / Harding County, there’s no place like it.”
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