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Camp Fire Cookin’ and Competin’
 Dutch-oven peach cobbler, campfire beans, and meat and potatoes cooked over a wood fire. Doesn’t get much better than that, does it?
The Working Ranch Cowboys Foundation is sponsoring a Chuck Wagon Champions Challenge to name the best of the best cook team, and the public is invited to help sample the fantastic fare. This inaugural event will be held as part of the Ride for the Brand Ranch Rodeo, July 4-5 in Colorado Springs, Colo., and proceeds will benefit WRCF.
The event will be held at the Norris/Penrose Events Center, as the kickoff to a 10-day western heritage celebration.
One of the contestants will be WRCF scholarship recipient Calvin Daugherty of Silverton, Texas. Calvin, 19, refurbished his own chuck wagon, and he has used it for a catering business for the past six years.
It’s entrepreneurial, self-starters like this that WRCF is pleased to help through its scholarship fund. Working ranch cowboys and their immediate family members are eligible for the scholarships, and it’s expected that each year’s recipients will include young people who want to be veterinarians, ranch owners and agriculture professionals.
For the 2008-2009 school year, WRCF awarded $31,000 in scholarships. All told, more than $115,000 in scholarships has been given out – most of that within the past three years when the foundation has experienced its most growth.
WRCF also helps working cowboys who have experienced illness or injury – either to themselves or their immediate family members. As of mid-June, $17,000 had been given out this year in crisis assistance. By now, that number will have grown. All told, WRCF has assisted cowboys and their families with more than $220,000 in crisis assistance.
To help out with this great cause, WRCF is pleased to sponsor the Chuck Wagon Champions Challenge. Other contestants include Susan Whipple, wife of the Working Ranch Cowboys Association president Randy Whipple, and Tim Belt of Avondale, Colo., who was one of the founding committee members of the Colorado Championship Ranch Rodeo in Hugo.
Other chuck wagons – coming from near and far – are:
-- Moreland Wagon Shop -- Glen Moreland, Fort Davis, Texas
-- The Heart Bar Wagon -- Kit Haddock, Monument, Colo.
-- Ming Bend Cattle Co. -- Haven Snow, Graham, Texas
-- Bar J -- Dumas, Texas
The wagon crews will be cooking throughout the day July 5, and they will begin serving meal-ticket-holders at 5 p.m.
Visitors can expect to see these cook teams dressed appropriately, and their wagons decked out authentically. They will represent a true picture of how working cowboys were fed on the trail between 1846 and 1947.
 
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