DH Lawrence - the Kiowa ranch cookbook...

 

The view from Kiowa ranch 1925 by DH Lawrence & Dorothy Brett.
DHL is riding the black horse.

Lawrence at Kiowa

D.H. Lawrence's surprisingly good cooking and DIY skills really came into their own when he and his German wife Frieda moved to a rundown, isolated homestead in the mountains of New Mexico, USA in the winter of 1922. In this article we'll be looking primarily at what he cooked but also at how they survived so remote and so completely off-grid... 

They initially rented a couple of huts at the Del Monte ranch, 17 miles north of Taos but a year later the penniless pair managed to acquire the neighbouring Kiowa ranch using the manuscript of Lawrence's book "Sons and Lovers" as payment.¹ It became their main base, between trips away, until September 1925 and Frieda returned there to live after Lawrence died in 1930.

It was really just a couple of disused huts (full of cow dung), a few old alfalfa fields and a paddock, 8600 feet up in the Rocky Mountains. It had no electricity, running water or gas and was hours from the nearest town. However, for Lawrence it was his dream home, his long-wished-for utopia that he'd named "Rananim"² and the ideal DIY doer-upper. Of the many places around the world where he restlessly lived, he was arguably happiest here... "I think New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had. It certainly changed me for ever."

Winters could be brutal though and their only means of transport was by horse, which they did often but not always without mishap⁴, or by "Lizzie", a rather unreliable Ford Model T motorcar which became completely useless in the snow.  

Knud Merrild, ace rabbit hunter

Everyone who knew him said that Lawrence was a keen and capable cook and an enthusiastic host. He'd learnt his way around a kitchen from early on, at home in Eastwood helping his mother and at Haggs Farm, his teenage home-from-home, up by Felley Woods where unbidden he'd don an apron and start peeling the onions, spuds and the brussel sprouts. Nor could you stop him from fastidiously washing up the dishes straight after the meal.

At the New Mexico ranch, ingredients were limited but the food he cooked up was good and wholesome. Staying with them at Del Monte were two young Danish painters, Knud Merrild and Kai Gotzsche. They explain the general food situation... "Owing to our limited resources and distance from any town, our food was necessarily very simple. We ate a lot of porridge, oatmeal, both for breakfast and supper, potatoes, salt meat, bacon and sausages, not to mention heaps of apples. The [neighbouring] rancher had more apples than he could sell, so he fed them to the pigs and to us. We could have all we wanted. Lawrence made apple cider for us and Gotzsche taught him to fry apples with bacon, a delicious Danish dish we had very often. Milk and butter we had daily, but not much. Eggs were scarce and only occasionally we could buy a bit of fresh meat from the rancher, and sometimes a chicken or two from the Mexican village down below." The Danes become proficient wild rabbit hunters too.

So what did Lawrence cook up?

Danish sweet bacon and apple or "Æbleflæsk" - Fry bacon until crisp, remove and fry sliced apples in the bacon juice, adding sugar to caramelise. Serve with homemade bread. His Danish companions taught Lawrence to cook this old Danish favourite³. Del Monte ranch had a surfeit of apples, which were used to feed their pigs (or to use the American term, "hogs"). There was lots of bacon courtesy of the same Del Monte hogs. I've made this myself with this years leftover garden apples and it is delicious with a slice of homemade sourdough bread. 

Home brew cider - Mash up the apples and strain the juice through muslin cloth (or possibly a pair of Frieda's old stockings!). Lawrence made cider with the leftover apples from the ranch's large orchard. It is not clear if he also fermented it into "hard cider" as the Americans call alcoholic cider. The unfermented apple juice would not last very long without refrigeration which they definitely did not have.

Home-baked bread done in the outdoor wood-fired adobe clay oven. The local Indians built the oven and showed Lawrence how to use it. Also living at Kiowa was Lawrence's long-term admirer Dorothy Brett. She explains... "After lunch, the Indian women show you how to bake in the Indian oven. We collect wood for them, while they make a big fire inside the oven. This they let burn for at least half an hour, until it burns down to red ashes. These are then raked out, and the inside of the oven is swabbed with a damp cloth on the end of a stick. The bread is put in on the end of a long, flat shovel. The bread you have ready, having prepared it over night.  

His first attempts were not so good but soon he was regularly producing the daily bread. As Merrild says... "Lawrence baked our bread, and except for the first few loaves, which were vile, he did it well, very well indeed."

Roast chicken in the adobe oven "...We also put in a young chicken, and in twenty minutes the bread and the chicken are done to a turn." They kept their own chickens at Kiowa but Brett had trouble plucking them... "The chicken is a perfect nuisance, though we have it in a basin of warm water. The feathers are hard to pull and fly all over the place. Nevertheless, you sing as you tug at the feathers. I pluck the wings, as you pluck the legs."

Rabbit stew ingredients

German wild rabbit stew or "Hasenpfeffer" - the Danes took to shooting the abundant wild rabbits or "cottontails" for the pot. Lawrence's love of wildlife meant he was never entirely comfortable about this but he usually ate it anyway except the time the Danes accidentally shot his favourite rabbit. (See "Baking cakes as an apology" below). When the Danes brought their first rabbit home Lawrence offered to cook it German-style as "Hasenpfeffer" or "Jugged Hare". He even explained how to skin it, a skill he'd no doubt picked up from his father who used to bring home rabbits on his way back from the pit. Hasenpfeffer is a traditional stew in German cuisine, the blood of the hare or rabbit is traditionally used, which serves to thicken it. It is typically a very flavourful and delicious stew. Lawrence had use of the vegetable garden at Del Monte which was well-stocked with beets, potatoes and carrots, ideal for the stew pot.

Sunday roast with all the trimmings - When they could get salted meat and potatoes from the ranch, Lawrence would cook that most traditional of English dinners, a "Sunday roast". Merrild again tells us... "He was a splendid cook, too. Once or twice during the week, and always on Sunday, we had dinner or supper at Lawrence’s. He would prepare a really swell meal, assisted by Frieda. I have not tasted a better roast with mint sauce, Yorkshire pudding or mince meat anywhere in England."

Lots of oatmeal porridge and "mush" - Their staple diet at Del Monte with the Danes which was often spruced up with any extra ingredients to hand to make a special variation they called "mush". As Merrild explains... "Our regular breakfast was porridge, alternated with mush, a change in name if nothing else, bread and coffee. We even had mush for dinner, too, a couple of days a week, and so that we might not tire of it, we varied its seasoning with sugar, syrup, honey or apple sauce. Often we mixed the mush half and half with apple sauce, which is pretty good. So whether you call it mush or porridge, we had a fair variety of flavour for the tongue and palate."

Eggs and bacon - the staple diet at Kiowa. With chickens and hogs around, it's a no-brainer. Brett often talks about having "supper" of eggs and bacon especially when other provisions are running low.

Indian wild plum jam - Boil up the plums, add roughly equal amount of sugar, when it reaches setting point, jar it up and seal. The local Indians brought them wild plums which Lawrence turned into jam. The blossom of the "Prunus Mexicana" tree is very aromatic. Brett writes... "The sun is setting; the road runs between hedges of wild plum trees; the white plum blossoms shimmer. Shall I ever forget the scent of the wild plum, as - tired, beyond measure tired - we ride through those long lanes of wild plum blossom?... I am aching, tired yet exalted; while into our tired, sharpened senses press the delicate, fragile scent of the wild plum blossoms." Lawrence had also made marmalade during his 1913 winter by Lake Garda in Italy soon after eloping with Frieda.. "I got the blues thinking of the future, so l left off and made some marmalade. It’s amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges or scrub the floor." No oranges in New Mexico mountains though.

Honey from wild bee hives - gathering the honey sounds like a dangerous job as Brett explains... "We are up in the canyon behind the ranch - the Raspberry Canyon - watching some men take the honey from the wild bees in the tree. They have cut down the tree, and have split it down one side. On one side is a thick layer of honey, on the other a mass of bees. You have been stung on the neck; Frieda is flapping wildly at them; I am keeping at a safe-ish distance."

DHL with Indian friends & Frieda

Wild strawberries - from the woods around Kiowa ranch. Brett picks them and collects them in a tin.

Indian campfire steak - They sometimes go over to the neighbouring Indian camp to eat... "In the evening we go up to the Indian Camp for supper. The Indians have built a half-circular screen of pine branches under a big pine tree. Inside they have laid skins and blankets. In front, a hole has been dug for the fire. A little further down the hill is the big Teepee and another half-circle of pine branches: in this, supper is cooking on a big fire. Frying pans with large steaks are sizzling. And we, very tired, are sitting around with our plates in our laps, waiting." Brett goes on to magically describe the rest of the evening spent under the stars by the fire listening to the beat of the Indian drums, the firelight playing on Lawrence's red beard⁶... 

Medicinal herbal tea - when Merild was ill Lawrence brewed him some sage tea... "He took a pot of water and put it on the fire. He broke the sage into bits and put it in the pot, stems, leaves and all. While it was coming to a boil, he told me he was making sage tea for my cold. “You see,” he said, “during the war, when they had the great influenza epidemic in America, they also had it out here. The Whites and Mexicans died like flies, but the Indians survived because they drank sage tea". However, it tasted vile and Merrild never had it again! His mother made herbal beer in Eastwood and the Lawrence kids were sent out into the woods for the raw ingredients. You can read more about that here. 

Milk from their cow, Susan, and butter - Before they got Susan the cow, they had to ride down to Del Monte ranch for milk. As Brett tells us..."I like milking," you [DHL] say to me. "There is something warm and mysterious that comes from the cow as one sits pressed close to her." Our bottles are filled and we gallop home." Merrild adds... "We always had fresh, newly milked raw milk, and also home-made, fresh-churned butter, good bread baked by Lawrence, coffee or tea. We had to economize a little on the butter, which was easily managed by using the lard on our sandwiches. What more can one expect, way out in the wilderness, nine thousand feet above sea-level?"

Buttermilk - Traditional buttermilk is a thin, cloudy, slightly tart but buttery-tasting liquid that's left after cream is churned to make butter. Lawrence liked it but Brett managed to spill it.. "With infinite care, I carry home the buttermilk, only to upset it as I put it on the kitchen table. You give me a withering look, as all the way home you had been enjoying the thought of the buttermilk for supper."

What about water?

At Kiowa, a trek to a spring⁵ in a nearby mountain valley was required to fill the water bottles. Eventually a long-abandoned pipe system was restored to feed the ranch with water from the Gallina canyon. At Del Monte Merrild explains the primitive water situation... " I also had to fetch the water. This was easy enough in the beginning. I got it from the creek running just outside the cabin. But as the winter grew colder, the creek froze to the bottom and I had to go upstream to Lawrence’s waterhole. But this froze eventually also, and he and I had to go further up the mountains with our pails and hatchets and chop holes in the ice until the winter finally froze us out of water. There was, however, a large basin of water at the ranch, but as one of the pigs, early in the winter, had fallen through the thin ice and drowned and was still in there, we didn’t feel inclined to use that water for anything but washing our linen and underwear. So we had to melt snow on the stove to get water for our cooking and drinking. To melt snow is a very slow process, so we economized on water as much as possible. We didn’t even use it on ourselves. We simply went outside and took rubdowns with the snow."

However, they took any opportunity to gather water and bathe. On a trip down to bathe in the Manby hot springs in the Rio Grande canyon, they took empty water bottles... "and while Mrs. Lawrence and the Danes smoked their after-lunch cigarettes, Lawrence filled the gallon bottles with water from the small outside spring, to take home for drinking water." The hot springs appeared in the film Easy Rider...

Easy Rider - Manby hot springs, Rio Grande

Lots of cups of English tea - Tea-time was any time! There was a mail box at the Del Monte road end and Lawrence always called in for a cuppa tea with the Danes... "Lawrence, after his domestic work, would answer his letters, write poetry or other works. In the afternoon, he would post his letters in the mail box, and on his way back, always stop in at our cabin for a cup of tea. This tea visit became a regular thing and he always stayed till sundown. Often he would come right after lunch, as early as one o’clock, and stay all afternoon." Lawrence was fussy about his tea... "There would be only one thing left to do: “The tea!” and that, of course, Lawrence simply had to do, or something was sure to be wrong ""

Baking cakes as an apology - when the Danes accidentally shot Lawrence's favourite rabbit for the stew pot he went ballistic. Merrild explains... "Lawrence quivered in rage. “You brute!” he shot at me. “How dare you shoot my rabbit. How ghastly of you! How dare you shoot in my garden! It’s my nice little bunny that nibbled around the house in the morning. How could you kill that innocent little animal?” And so he carried on." When his fiery temper got the better of him, a spoken apology was rarely offered. Instead he'd bake cakes and take them as a peace offering. .. "Next day Lawrence brought us some bread and cakes. Last night’s incident was never spoken of. Some things are best forgotten." Oops!

Kiowa in winter

Sources: 

A Poet and Two Painters by Knud Merrild 

https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781163141519/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater

"In our household, Gotzsche did the cooking and I washed the dishes and cleaned the house. I also had to fetch the water. This was easy enough in the beginning. I got it from the creek running just outside the cabin. But as the winter grew colder, the creek froze to the bottom and I had to go upstream to Lawrence’s waterhole. But this froze eventually also, and he and I had to go further up the mountains with our pails and hatchets and chop holes in the ice until the winter finally froze us out of water. There was, however, a large basin of water at the ranch, but as one of the pigs, early in the winter, had fallen through the thin ice and drowned and was still in there, we didn’t feel inclined to use that water for anything but washing our linen and underwear. So we had to melt snow on the stove to get water for our cooking and drinking. To melt snow is a very slow process, so we economized on water as much as possible. We didn’t even use it on ourselves. We simply went outside and took rubdowns with the snow. 

Owing to our limited resources and distance from any town, our food was necessarily very simple. We ate a lot of porridge, oatmeal, both for breakfast and supper, potatoes, salt meat, bacon and sausages, not to mention heaps of apples. The rancher had more apples than he could sell, so he fed them to the pigs and to us. We could have all we wanted. Lawrence made apple cider for us and Gotzsche taught him to fry apples with bacon, a delicious Danish dish we had very often. Milk and butter we had daily, but not much. Eggs were scarce and only occasionally we could buy a bit of fresh meat from the rancher, and sometimes a chicken or two from the Mexican village down below.

Almost at will I could go out and shoot wild rabbit and cottontail which were plentiful, but one can get tired of eating too much rabbit.

Lawrence baked our bread, and except for the first few loaves, which were vile, he did it well, very well indeed. 

He was a splendid cook, too. Once or twice during the week, and always on Sunday, we had dinner or supper at Lawrence’s. He would prepare a really swell meal, assisted by Frieda. I have not tasted a better roast with mint sauce, Yorkshire pudding or mince meat anywhere in England.

Perhaps it sounds funny that Lawrence did the cooking. But Frieda was born and raised in the German nobility, and during her first marriage always had servants about her, so that she had had very little experience in domestic work during her life. What she knew by this time Lawrence had taught her. She was a pretty fair cook, but nevertheless Lawrence couldn’t refrain from his everlasting teaching, It was often decided that Frieda should make a meal for us all by herself, just to show that she could, but Lawrence couldn’t keep his nose out of the kitchen, and soon he would have his fingers in pots and pans despite Frieda’s protest and ours. 

It took all the joy out of it for her, of course. Naturally, we sided with her, but she took it well. But Lawrence just smiled like a naughty boy who knows he is wrong. If she had lost interest in cooking it would be comprehensible, but she didn’t, at least not when she was let alone. I remember that when we went out on excursions or to the hot springs without her, she would, on our arrival, meet us on the porch, beaming with joy, telling us what a delicious, big meal she had prepared for us. And it was. It always tasted good. 

There would be only one thing left to do: “The tea!” and that, of course, Lawrence simply had to do, or something was sure to be wrong. "

Notes

1 - Kiowa was the only property the Lawrence's ever owned and it was actually in Frieda's name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence_Ranch

2 - Rananim... During the First World War D H Lawrence wanted to found a society of friends with whom he could “sail away from the world at war and found a little colony.” He called it Rananim after hearing his friend SS Koteliansky singing the Hebrew song Rananim Sadekim Badenoi. Its emblem would be a black phoenix. The song is a musical version of Psalm 33 by S.S.Koteliansky. A more accurate transliteration is “Ranenu tsadikim ba’adonai” which means “Rejoice in the Lord O ye righteous”. In the original Hebrew it is רַנְּנוּ צַדִּיקִים בַּיהוָה

https://jot101.com/2015/01/dh-lawrence-ranamin-lost-plans/

https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2018/01/29/d-h-lawrences-rananim-another-failed-utopia/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfXY72fSWHQ&ab_channel=%D7%93%D7%95%D7%93%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%94%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%98%D7%95%D7%A9

3 - How to pronounce "Æbleflæsk"  https://www.howtopronounce.com/danish/%C3%A6blefl%C3%A6sk

4 - From "A Poet and Two Painters", one of their early horse riding adventures in New Mexico, of which there were to be many, but none as dramatic and dangerous as this one...

"After the heavy work and all the house cleaning we all felt we needed a cleaning ourselves and wanted a good bath. This, however, was not so easy, as we had no bathing facilities on the place unless we were prepared to chop a hole in the ice and take a dip in the cold water of the creek, or a rubdown with snow. We felt inclined to do neither, so we decided to go to the hot springs, some seventeen to twenty miles away. 

As there was much snow in the mountains and the roads were in a very slippery condition, we dared not go in our car, so we rented four saddle horses from the rancher and started on a trip that nearly ended in mishap at the outset. 

Lawrence was given the only real horse a beautiful sorrel, very shy and very quick. The rest of us rode cow ponies, Frieda on "Browny," Gótzsche on "Pinto," and I, the last chooser, on "Lady." She was an ambler who meandered like a camel with her peculiar gait and was very hard to get accustomed to, but later, I would not change her for any of the others. The sorrel was a much taller horse than our cow ponies, so Lawrence towered above us, a real general. 

He looked well on the horse He had on a huge, grey, five-gallon hat, a leather jacket and checkered trousers tucked into a pair of long, high-heeled riding boots. His horse pranced and side-stepped, strutting about in a lively manner. He took the lead of the small caravan and we proceeded down the mountain-side through the forest. 

We had not gone far before the shy sorrel got frightened. She reared on her hind legs, made a leap to one side, and in a wild panic went off with Lawrence, who instantly and completely lost control of her. He bobbed up and down, and every second we feared he would be thrown, but he hung on. Lagging behind, we followed on the ponies. The sorrel, in its wild dash, came to the edge of a ravine, did not stop nor alter its course but plunged down the side, barely missing the trees on its way. 

Lawrence ducked his head to avoid being brushed off by the dangerous, low-hanging branches. One scratched him and tore off his hat. We were almost afraid to look, but we followed as best we could. Then the sorrel stumbled as she reached the bottom of the ravine. Lawrence immediately seized the opportunity, reined it in and got control just as Gótzsche and I rode up to his side. The presence of the other horses soon quieted the shy sorrel and we went up the ravine and joined Frieda, who had been a frightened spectator. Lawrence was of course a bit shaken, but it didn't take him long to regain his sureness. We continued on our way as if nothing had happened and Lawrence took the lead in the single file. Where space would permit it, we rode side by side so that we could converse. 

Naturally, Lawrence talked about his experience on the runaway horse I don't remember it word for word, but he has described the episode in one of his books, so I will let him talk. He speaks of himself as Jack. Here it is, in part: "... because it was natural for his legs to grip and stick, Jack stuck on.- His bones rattled, his hat flew off, his heart beat high. But unless the horse came down backwards on top of him, he could stay on. And he was not really afraid. He thought: 'If he doesn't go down backwards on top of me, I shall be all right.' He tried to quiet the horse 'Steady now, steady!' he said, in a low, intimate voice. 'Steady, boy!' And all the time he held on with his thighs and knees, like iron. He did not believe in the innate viciousness of the horse He never believed in the innate viciousness of anything, except a man. And he did not want to fight the horse for simple mastery. He wanted just to hold it hard with his legs until it soothed down a little, and he and it could come to an understanding. But he must never relax the hold of his hard legs, or he was dead. 

He stuck on with the lower half of his body like a vice, feeling as if his head would be jerked off his shoulders. It was becoming hard work. But he knew, unless he stuck on, he was a dead man. Jack was conscious of a body of live muscle and palpitating fire between his legs, of a furious head tossing hair like hot wire, and bits of white foam. Also he was aware of the trembling in his own thighs, and the sensual exertion of gripping that hot, wild body in the power of his own legs. Gripping the hot horse in a grip of sensual mastery that made him tremble strangely with a curious quivering. Yet he dared not relax. 

The horse bolted like the wind, and Jack held on with his knees and by balance. He was thrilled, really: frightened externally, but internally keyed up; and never for a moment did he relax his mind's attention, nor the attention of his own tossed body. Up he went, off the saddle, and down he came again, with a shattering jerk, down on the front of the saddle. The balance he kept was a mystery even to himself, his body was so flung about by the volcano of furious life beneath him. He felt himself shaken to pieces, his bones rattled all out of socket. The slim straight trees slipped past, the motion of the horse surging her own way was exhilarating to a degree. She turned into bigger timber, much bigger and with hanging limbs. He kept his eyes open, till he knew by second sight when to duck.

He reined in the horse pulling it almost on to its haunches. He held on like a vice with his knees, for the horse was pawing the air, frantic at being held up.""

5 - Brett writes about its gruelling maintenance regime in her book "Lawrence and Brett".. "For several days, with the aid of Trinidad who has ridden up to visit us, we have been cleaning out the spring. Down in the little canyon, past the fallen cotton- wood tree, way behind my house, is the spring. It drips slowly into a tub from a pipe. It is dark and shady in the canyon among the trees. The water has been tasting funny lately, so we have decided to dig up the pipe, clean the pool and put in a new pipe. What hard work it is. The pipe is out at last; the pool is full of dead leaves. We clean them out. Then Frieda and I fetch stones: we make a new pool, lined with stones and covered with stones so that the leaves can't fall in. The new pipe is fixed, the tub is emptied. Trinidad digs a hole in the side of the hill for it. After three days of sweating and struggling, the tub is fixed again and we sit exhausted, but happy and triumphant, to watch the water trickle slowly into the tub, up to the brim, over and down the sides. Clear, cold, beautiful water."

https://archive.org/details/lawrencebrettfri00bret/page/103/mode/1up?view=theater&q=spring

Later, a more reliable pipe system is laid up to the Gallina canyon... "You have started building the water pipes up the Gallina. Scott Murray with a team is working every day, with Trinidad and others to help. You spend most of the day sitting under a tree watching them, as the walk out to the head of the Gallina is not too far or hard for you. It is difficult work, as the long, heavy pipes have to be fixed by chains to the horses and dragged along a small, steep trail to the creek."

6 - "After supper we walk up the hill to the other camp and lie down on the blankets and skins. It is one of those magical evenings; a clear sky, a very young moon rising pale and slim out of the setting sun, a large star hanging below the moon. No sound, not a twig moves. The Indians are sitting in a row on a log, facing the setting sun. One of them rises and throws a great log on the fire, the flames leap high. The Indians are softly beating a small hand-drum, like a tambourine, and singing in their strange, haunting voices to the sinking sun. As the light fades, we all slip into shadow. The firelight catches your red beard and white face, bringing it suddenly out of the darkness. You are brooding, with- drawn, remote. Remote as the group of dark Indians are remote in their ecstasy of singing, the firelight playing on their vivid blankets, the whites of their eyes. I am caught and held by your brooding face. All of us are caught and held by the rhythm, the Indian rhythm, as if the very earth itself were singing." - "Lawrence and Brett"