Ranch-Made Tools for the Camp Cook

To use, dig the shovel under the hot coals from the cook fire. Then lift straight up and shake the shovel to release the ash. Make sure that you're down wind from the Dutch ovens and bystanders. Otherwise, you'll bath the ovens and everything within a 10-foot radius with ash. After you've cleaned the coals of ash, dump them onto the oven lid.

Plows into woks

What do you do with spent plow disks? Like many Dutch oven cooks, Sanders puts them to work. But instead of turning them into ubiquitous Dutch oven stands, his son Tommy Sanders converted a large plow disk into a camp wok.

Tommy filled the square axle hole with a round steel plate and welded a 3-inch rim around the outside of the disk. He formed each of two handles with a pair of "J" hooks and brake springs.

Sanders used the wok for the first time during the Historic Sonora Pass Wagon Train. He took chicken thigh meat and stir-fried it along with vegetables, Chinese noodles and a stir-fry mix.

Cowboys and ranchers are ingenious folks. Often living far from town, they've had to fabricate devises that make the job easier. And since nothing is tossed out, anything like a broken plow blade is welded back together.

Sanders is no stranger to this philosophy. Some of his equipment may appear rustic. But it does the job. And in the end, his customers feast on the best Western chow in the territory.

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