Yesterday I visited a local ranch to take photos for a promotion we're doing on border food and travel to the region. (New Pi members, you may see something about the Trail later this fall!) My host was an El Paso native, who went to culinary school in Vermont, and came back to Van Horn to settle on the family's ranch. She's working to open a restaurant in Van Horn next year which will dramatically improve the culinary climate in Culberson County. I simply can't wait to have Shanna's food available all the time!
Shanna has 200 goats, 20 cattle, horses, geese, dogs, cats and manages to take care of them all while she's renovating our building, planning the restaurant, operating a catering business, developing an orange mint crop for the production of essential oils, and waitressing three nights a week. In many ways she typifies the hardworking people of the region. Almost everyone has to do more than one thing to make a living here. Yes, it makes for a "harder" life by some definitions, but it also makes for an interesting life, too, which I understand after balancing art and job for many years. These are worthwhile struggles.
We drove all over their section yesterday morning so I could take photos of Shanna feeding the animals. When we got to the cattle she wondered why February, one of her cows, was separated from the rest of them. We lumbered over the field in her massive pickup truck to find a completely unexpected healthy newborn calf curled up next to her momma. The baby had been born that morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment