CALF_News_April_May_2020

38 CALF News • April | May 2020 • www.calfnews.net Beyond the Ranch Gate Timelessness B eing just three months into a new decade, there is considerable din about the next trends in design, food, lifestyles and even more predominantly sustainable and “net-zero” energy consumption. eing an architect by trade I am inundated with manufactur- ers’ new product lines expounding new features and color palettes for everything from paint to plumbing fixtures. Open- ing yet another trade journal, they listed the top five home improvement trends with a couple involving sustainability and energy consumption along with a stylistic and design factor of promoting attention-grabbing bold colors in exterior products from windows and doors to roofing. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines trend as a general movement: SWING, a current style or preference; vogue, or a line of development; approach, or the general movement in the course of time of a statistically detectable change. From the fashion centers of New York, Paris and Milan, what is a must-have item for the season becomes old news the moment the dress or shoes leaves the retailer. It is no wonder that shoe stores and dress shops and subsequently our residence closets are filled with multiple pairs of footwear and matching dresses that have fallen out of vogue. Contrasting the trendiness of fashion apparel, I cherish my two pair of hand-made, custom cowboy boots that, if human, would be of legal age to straddle a barstool and sip bourbon. Made by a nearly century-old saddle and boot maker found in the Fort Worth Stockyards, my “comfortable-right-from- the-box” footwear pair well with faded and worn Levi’s that probably makes a stylistic statement contrary to most of my architectural brethren. In an essay in Cowboys & Indians magazine, fashion editor Andrea Thorp aptly wrote of my adopted fashion sense, By Blaine Davis Contributing Editor “Instead of trendiness, we seek out timelessness. We pine for the days we look forward to Grandfather handing down his beloved watch or Mother entrusting us with her precious fur coat.” In my case, my mother-in-law entrusted me with several older cast iron skillets that have become part of my backyard arsenal in preparing perfect medium-rare, reverse-sear ribeye steaks with sides of roasted potatoes and vegetables. Agreeing with renown chuckwagon cook Kent Rollins, among his noto- riety and a second recently released cookbook, Faith, Family & The Feast: Recipes to Feed Your Crew From the Grill, Garden and Iron Skillet , defeated Bobby Flay in a 2010 Food Network “Throwdown” with an iconic American staple – chicken fried steak.“Cast-iron skillets and Dutch ovens hold up to the fire and add great flavor to food,” he said. When asked, what piece of cooking equipment do you always pack? Rollins replied,“The coffee pot and cast iron are must-haves on the wagon.” Supplementing my backyard arsenal of culinary implements is an assortment of repurposed cleavers and fillet knifes. My late father-in-law spent much of his life as a supervisor in a small, by today’s norm, beef processing plant in north-central Kansas, collected a bevy of these hardwood-handled, stain- less steel tools. Used, but not used up, I salvaged several from under his workbench in the family garage, waiting more than 30 years in hiding for their resurrection. With a little attention on my sharpening and honing stones and a revitalizing mineral oil treatment to their handles, these “retro” blades now carve my fine hand-cut steaks, and dice potatoes and vegetables awaiting their cast iron skillet treatment. Moving from my backyard culinary oasis into my garage workshop, one can spot multitudes of hand tools that I have inherited or found in the dusty corners and over-crowded shelves of antique stores and pawn shops along the roads of my “steel steed’s” travels. While many of these I rescued or purchased as art or decoration, several hand planes, scribing gauges, bits and braces have been essential in building each of my youngest four grandchildren a toy box for past Christ- mases, and a pair of knotty alder stile and rail “barn doors” for my daughter and son-in-law’s newly finished basement recreation room. Many of my rescued tools are experiencing a repurposed life with a little sharpening and straightening of blades, removing years of corrosion and polishing surfaces to perform as if that of a newly manufactured one with probably more reliability and life expectancy, they become timeless. With my reuse of my culinary collection and woodshop pieces, I approach sustainability in simple terms of economy, practicality and just plain common sense. Having shown disdain for much of the rhetoric expounded on the approach to sustainability and “net-zero” energy con- sumption, my design work exhibits the timelessness found in Continued on page 41 