This year I decided to post our Black Iron Gang cooking adventures and outings. We are a bunch of fella's that like the old cowboy ways of cooking. We have participated in the Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium World Chuck Wagon Cook Off for the last 4 years. We have been fortunate to have placed in two categories, we had a 3rd place in potatoes our first year and a 4th in meat this past year. I assure you we are not in it for the glory of winning, and we are surprised with these two honors. We are there to have fun, good fellowship, cook a good cowboy meal for the paying customers and friends and family.

This is most of us. From right to left: Walter Lowe, Wayne Slinkard, Gary Heil, Bill Hartman (holding his new granddaughter PJ Roebuck) and Bob Wooley, missing is Madux Hobbs and our newest member Robert Floyd.

I can only tell you we sure eat a lot and our friends and family who join us really get fed well. Some of us have been as far as Amarillo Texas cooking on a ranch at branding time. Others have been to political gatherings serving as many as 300 people. There has been weddings that were done for friends and relatives, reunions, memorials. It has all been done for the love of cooking dutch ovens.

We get a lot of our inspirations from different cookbooks that feature cowboy cooking, then we either tweak them to fit our tastes or leave them be and enjoy them. I can truly say we experiment a lot.

This is our wagon at Ruidoso New Mexico competing in the cook off in 2011. We do not own the wagon ourselves we borrow it. Our good friend Phelps Anderson of the Circle Diamond Ranch has two of them we use the Circle Diamond wagon. It has been said that back in the day when Pat Garrett was chasing Billy the Kid, he would go out of his way to eat at this wagon when it was out working on the ranch to get the best meal around.

Well I better get out of here for know I think I have a practice session brewing in my head. Hope you enjoy our adventures we only wish you were here enjoying them with us.