Nine times out of 10, Thanksgiving in Northern Arizona will come nosing ahead of a storm like an old lead cow going to water. A solid front of gray will move across the prairie, driven by a northwest wind whipping and slashing the drags.

It won’t be the kind of gentle storm that gathers in July like a flock of white-winged doves. It won’t be flighty like the spring storms that flutter over from California, light here and there and move on.

It will be a full-blown storm front, shivering with snow and sleet. A storm that does what it sets out to do — puts an end to autumn. Mother cows go off to their canyons and cedar breaks to wait out the winter. The saddle horses, turned out to pasture, will have to make their own living until they’re needed again.

Every year is a gamble to see how long the cattle can graze on mature feed and put on weight before that first storm scatters them. Most Northern Arizona ranchers round up their cattle in October and sell them around the middle of November, when they have the biggest gain on calves and yearlings.

When roundup is over and the cattle have been shipped, the holes in the fences are fixed and the hired hands laid off till spring branding. Then, if a man listens, the coyotes will tell him a storm is on the way. A strain of urgency, a frantic ululated song, breaks with dawn.

The coyotes tell him it’s time to get out the long-handled underwear, stock up on hay and supplement feed for the cattle, lay in a few cords of firewood, store up canned goods in the pantry, and slaughter a beef. It’s a long way to town, and the roads are rough in winter.

Because of the nature of the life and work, country Thanksgiving traditions are different from those townspeople know. In the old days, a cowboy often let Thanksgiving get by him. Even the faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) had little time for celebration. On Thursday, November 29, 1894, Snowflake pioneer Lucy Hannah White Flake wrote in her journal: “All well. This is thanksgiving day. The wind is blowing. There was no school this afternoon so we washed. The men folks are all working on the reservoy [reservoir].”

Later on, when the country developed and roads improved, ranch families came together to celebrate the holidays. The manner of celebration depended on where they came from and who their kinfolks were.

Arizona ranch cooking derived from Texas cow camps and Mexican sheep camps; from Apache wickiups, Navajo hogans and Hopi pueblos. It came across the ocean from Europe and out on the railroad from back East. It came from packets of seeds carried in wagons along the Mormon Trail from Utah. It backtracked from California, too.

Thanksgiving dinner on an Arizona ranch is likely to have scents and seasonings never dreamt of by the pilgrims, but Western ranchers have just as much to be thankful for, maybe more. They have freedom for their heritage. It’s in their walk, their handshakes, their slow speech and easy manner.

A ranch family is thankful if they all made it through spring branding and fall roundup and lived to tell about it. They are thankful for the rain that filled the tanks and made winter feed. They are thankful for the calves and steer yearlings that paid the mortgage. They are thankful, too, for friends and neighbors who helped out with the work.

Most of all, they are thankful for the family that draws together when roundup is over to eat hearty and thank God for partnering with them another year. Thanksgiving is a time a ranch kid is not likely to forget.
 

Illustration of mom and two children in a kitchen while dad arrives home at the door. By Kim Johnson.


Although it’s not quite the same as it once was, Thanksgiving dinner on Southwestern ranches respects its traditions. Most ranch wives have freezers now, and weekly access to fresh produce in town, but many have kitchen gardens and put up their own fruits and vegetables. Most ranchers still butcher beef in the fall and freeze it, bottle it or make jerky out of it.

Even if they have sold out to the subdividers and moved from the old ramshackle ranch house to a split-level in town, women raised on ranches are likely to serve recipes they inherited from mothers and grandmothers.

With every bite of cornbread stuffing, carrot pudding or mincemeat pie, memories ebb and flow ... back to the smell of cedar firing an early morning cookstove. Bacon, coffee, fried eggs. The whang of a pumping windmill. The ring of spurs and clomp of boots on a plank floor. Cold mornings and fresh horses. Faces of those no longer at the table. Memories.


Irene Roberson of Joseph City, past president of Northern Arizona Cowbelles (beef-promoting ranch wives), remembers Thanksgiving dinners at the Tolapi Ranch near Sanders, in Apache County, and later Black Rock Ranch, in Navajo County. Her mother and father, Wallace and Verna Crawford, moved from drought in New Mexico to drought in Arizona during the Great Depression.

They brought a herd of range cattle and a small band of registered Polled Herefords (a hornless breed) with them. “We lost most of the registered stock in the winter of ’36-’37,” Irene said. “We went to bed one night and woke up the next morning with 3 feet of snow on the ground. It snowed for four days. The cattle would drift in front of the storm. They’d hang up in a fence corner. The next spring, we found 50 dead cows piled up next to the fence, in one place. My dad lost 125 registered head.”

In spite of the adversities of ranch life, Irene said, “We always had great holidays. By Thanksgiving we were through with the big work, but we still had to feed. My dad was the only rancher in the country [Northeastern Arizona] who put out feed in the winter. He fed cottonseed cake. The rest of them just left the cattle on their own. They either made it or they didn’t. We had a little wagon and team of mules to put out feed.

“On Thanksgiving Day we got up at 4 o’clock just like any other day on a ranch. The chores went on. My dad liked his breakfast on the table at 5. We sat at the table drinking coffee till daylight. For breakfast we generally had ham, gravy and hot biscuits, fried potatoes, sometimes pork chops. We always had a big breakfast because sometimes the men didn’t come in till 3 or 4 in the afternoon.”


The Crawfords had their own pigs, chickens and beef, but Verna was never allowed a vegetable garden. “My dad always told her, ‘If you wanted a garden, you should have married a farmer,’ ” Irene said. They bought groceries in Holbrook, Arizona, or Gallup, New Mexico. “We tried to get to town within a month of Thanksgiving,” she said.

Besides the family, the Crawfords would have neighbors in to dinner, Irene recalled. “There were two old bachelors who shared the holidays with us: Ben Cotton, who joined us on a corner, and Mr. Black. They never drove; they bundled up and rode over horseback. Uncle Ben dipped snuff, and Mr. Black chewed tobacco. They quarreled with each other constantly. If one said something was true, the other one said it wasn’t. Then we had a young man who worked for us. He was about 14 and had been orphaned. We usually had a couple of Indian boys, too.”

For Thanksgiving dinner, her mother nearly always cooked a roast or couple of chickens, Irene said. “She’d season the roast with sage or oregano, salt and pepper, kind of like a bouquet garni,” she said. “She didn’t much mess with the flavor of the beef.”

The Crawfords killed their own beef after fattening it in the corral for a few weeks. “My dad always stood ’em up and fed ’em,” Irene said. “Out in that country, they’d taste ‘sagey’ if we didn’t. We had plenty of eggs, lots of milk and cream. One of the men would do the milking. Mother never learned to milk. She used to say she would dry up a cow for a week every time she tried to milk.” 

The Crawford family, like most ranch families, made their own entertainment. “Mother would play the piano, and we’d all sing,” Irene said. “Daddy had a beautiful voice. Then we’d play cards or play games. We’d pop corn in the fireplace at night. Mother used an old tin popcorn popper. I still have it.

“I guess what I remember most about Thanksgiving were Mother’s sweet potato pies. You make them just like a pumpkin pie, only with sweet potatoes. Mother always used those dark red Louisiana yams. We didn’t have much in those days, but we were always thankful for what we had.”
 

Illustration of family gathering acorns from oak trees by a stream. By Kim Johnson.


Babe Whipple of Show Low, Arizona, grew up on a ranch in the Linden area, close to the Mogollon Rim. Times were hard, but she said her mother, Ione Pearce, never complained. “She had eight kids to raise alone when my dad died,” Babe said.

Raised in Snowflake, Arizona, Ione Pearce had a teaching certificate from Northern Arizona Normal School. She supported her family by teaching school, running cattle and farming.

“My brother Rog was 16 when my dad died,” Babe said. “He ran cattle on our [U.S. Forest Service] permit, but all the girls had to be cowboys, too. We had a 100-acre wheat field and also raised corn and cane. Mama seldom hired anybody. We did our own work. Mama would get up and plow before she went to school. We’d run the tractor all night sometimes. We’d take our wheat to Silver Creek Mill and have it ground into flour. We kept enough to feed the chickens and saved some seed for the next year.

“At Thanksgiving the older kids came home.” For dinner, her mother would roast a turkey and boil a chicken. “She’d use the chicken broth to moisten the stuffing,” Babe said. “She’d put in onion, giblets, celery, nuts, sage, salt and pepper. We didn’t always have butter, so sometimes she added top milk [cream].”

Vegetables were stored in the root cellar outside or bottled in the pantry. Milk and butter were cooled in a shed next to the cement water storage tank. “We didn’t go to the store and buy lettuce, I’ll tell you that,” Babe said. They had plenty of bottled beef, green beans and peas on pantry shelves, and carrots, beets, potatoes and winter squash from the root cellar. 

Ione Pearce’s specialty was homemade noodles, and everyone in the country used to ask for her recipe. The highlight of Thanksgiving dinner was homemade egg noodles in turkey gravy. “She’d just boil them in a big kettle on top of the stove,” Babe said. “I’ve never been able to get them as thin as Mama did.” 

After dinner, the Pearce children would play. “There were enough of us so we could all play games inside the house or outside,” Babe said. “At night, Mama would read to us by kerosene lantern.”

Her mother made the children feel as if they had everything a person could want. “You didn’t feel sorry for yourself,” Babe said.

She continued, “We never began a day without prayer. My lifetime was lived with my mother’s influence, so we had family prayer every day. She’d make sure we kids all had a turn. If it was a special day, we’d mention it in our family prayer. At Thanksgiving, we’d give thanks for the harvest, for the corn and wheat and hay. We prayed not only for our family but for our animals, too, that they’d be strong and make it through the winter. We always had a blessing on our food, every meal.”


Pete Ellsworth of Show Low said his father blessed their food every meal when he was growing up, but they had a special blessing at Thanksgiving.

“On days like that, the regular routine was broken,” he recalled. “School was out in the middle of the week, and the kids were all home. Maybe that morning we might kill a beef or a pig. Mother would cook turkey stuffed with cornbread dressing. We had plenty of vegetables from our garden. We’d have pumpkin pies and mincemeat pies, but the thing I remember most is Mother’s suet pudding. Some people called it carrot pudding, but Mother called it suet pudding. She used a lemon dip with it. Delicious.”

The closer a rancher lived to the mountains, the more likely he was to have game for Thanksgiving. Pete and his wife still live on the little ranch south of Show Low where he was born and raised. A creek runs through the ranch, and there’s a beaver dam upstream.
 

Illustration of mom reading to two children by lantern light. By Kim Johnson.


“We used to have a big old wild turkey gobbler for Thanksgiving dinner,” Pete said. “My mother’s family came from the Gila Valley. In the fall, her brothers would come out to hunt. We all had our share of deer, elk and wild turkeys.”

Pete had three brothers and two sisters. After Thanksgiving dinner, they would pitch horseshoes or have shooting contests, he said: “My father and us boys did a lot of shooting with a .22. Before the day was over, we usually had a contest going. We’d shoot pennies. You may not believe this, but we’d pitch pennies into the air, and my younger brother LaMell could hit ’em. He used to spend a lot of time target practicing.”


Nick Thompson, a White Mountain Apache, spent much of his time shooting, too, but with a bow and arrow. Said his daughter Velita Krueger, “We always had turkey for Thanksgiving, but my father and brothers went hunting for it with bows and arrows. My dad made his own bows and flint-head arrows.”

Velita continued: “When my father was young, he was straw boss for the Cibecue Cattlemen’s Association. We’d spend our summers with the cattle up at Sheep Springs and our winters down at the Flying V Ranch, between Cibecue and Salt River Canyon [in Arizona]. My mother, father, five children and grandparents would all get together at the Flying V for Thanksgiving.”

The Indians celebrated Thanksgiving long before the pilgrims came, Velita said: “It was the end of harvest season. They got through picking corn and roots and pine nuts. The meats were all made into jerky. They got ready for the winter.

“What they used to do,” she said, “the hunters would, when they killed a wild animal, always cut off the head and elevate it on some mountain or tree. That’s so the eagle could see it. He’s a messenger to Ussen. They would give thanks to Ussen, our God, for the animals they killed. The hunters never used to carry the head back with them.”

Velita said her family would cook outdoors over an open fire and eat their meal outside, too. “We could use any wood that hadn’t been struck by lightning or didn’t have owl holes in it,” she said. “It couldn’t be gnawed by a beaver, either; that’s taboo. Any other wood was OK to cook with.

“A long time ago, we just had traditional foods. We’d have acorn stew, we’d make some tortillas, ash bread — that’s bread cooked in the ashes — squash, pumpkin, ground corn, parched corn. We’d boil some meat and put pumpkin and acorns into it. My mother would boil the squash, then mix it with butter, salt and pepper. The salt we used came from sacred salt caves along the Salt River.”

The family had a small farm in Cibecue where they grew their vegetables. They gathered piñon nuts and acorns in the fall. “The acorns we used came from around Globe and along the Salt River,” Velita said. “They say if you’re a real good person, the acorns don’t taste bitter after you grind them on the metate. We’d only use a certain kind of acorn — the ones that are
yellow inside and brown outside.”

Velita said her father still makes bows and arrows. “The family still gets together every year to celebrate Thanksgiving at the Flying V with traditional Apache foods, but it’s getting more modern,” she said. “My sister Marie makes pumpkin pies now. We still sing songs and give thanks to Ussen for giving us such a bountiful life.”


Giving thanks around a table is only part of a ranch Thanksgiving. A cowboy carries it in his heart all year long.

As Pete Ellsworth said, “I guess I’m kind of an outlaw as far as religion goes. But every day that I’m in the saddle is a pleasure to me. I’m just grinnin’ with joy, especially if I happen to ride up on a big bunch of wild turkeys or a herd of antelope. I’m kind of an odd individual. I’m always happy when I’ve got a good horse between my legs ... lots of wide open country ... fresh air. I’m thankful every day. I guess I just enjoy living.”

Pride and tradition prevail on an Arizona ranch Thanksgiving Day. Somehow, the ones who made it possible are always there. Memories waft from the kitchen with the smell of pumpkin pie and venison, mincemeat, wild turkey with cornbread stuffing, homemade noodles, suet pudding. The summer garden greens again with each bite of peas or green beans; the orchard breathes again in peach preserves spread thick on homemade yeast rolls. It may be slim pickings part of the year, but at Thanksgiving, there’s plenty for all.

And if a winter storm is biting at the heels of dark clouds, listen. You can almost hear the pounding of a herd of range cattle and the far-off cries of men and horses bringing up the drags. Coming home. Coming home.