Whether you are a male or female, imagine cooking a good tasting meal under the worst conditions imaginable and having to keep it warm and having it on time three times a day. Your preparation surface is about 3 ft. square. Now add that you've done this all week, the cupboard is getting bare, and there is nowhere to go for more food. Let's add a cold, wet climate condition and the fact that everything you cook must be cooked on a wood fire. You get up at 3:00 AM to start breakfast to be ready at 6:00 AM. Lunch is served at 12:00 noon, but no one is there to eat it until 12:30. You have to keep the food warm. Supper is at 6:00 PM and after a few preparations for the next day, your current day is complete. You have been busy all day cooking, but now there is no warm bed. You sleep in a bedroll on the ground all night and hope you can keep warm in winter or cool in summer. Then you get up and start all over again.

We have just described part of the life of a chuckwagon cook. Charlie Ferguson of the C&P Ranch in Chug Water, Wyoming, is away from home cooking for cowboys about 10 months out of the year. He could get a job in town with easier work and more pay, but it wouldn't be what he loves to do. This is his real job! City folks would have to get past the sterile kitchen concept and remember cowboys have been eating like this for decades and rarely are sick.