San Luis Valley woman keeps on keepin’ on with all-natural food truck | Craving Colorado

SOUTH FORK • The name of Rachel Davie’s business is also her guiding mantra.

“Keep on Keepin’ on,” she named the food truck she parked here in 2015 beside U.S. 160, having driven it through a blizzard from Denver some 240 miles away.

“That’s what life is, right?” says Davie, 52. “Keep on keepin’ on.”

That’s what life has been for her. Starting when she was a kid on the farm here in the San Luis Valley, chasing cattle and sheep all day on horseback. Continuing when she was an adult, struggling with drug addiction. Continuing when she went to culinary school in Denver in the late 1990s, the wife of a man with whom she’d split, becoming the single mother of two young girls.

“They were my armor,” Davie says — her inspiration for getting clean. She has been for 20 years now, she says.

She kept keepin’ on through culinary school, even with her marriage dissolving in the middle of the education. The man had envisioned taking advantage of her new skills for a resort-style attraction.

Davie had her own idea.

And here it is: the colorful truck where she serves burger sliders from cows that only eat grass on the 160-acre ranch where she resides with her fiancè.

Most popular is the Wolf Creek Brake Burner, named for the mountain pass ahead. The beef melts with cream cheese, grilled onions, jalapeños and a jalapeño aioli. That comes with a side, the potato salad being the wise choice, homemade with Davie’s homegrown potatoes.

The valley is known for potatoes — a history Davie knows well. She’s a fifth-generation native, descended from one of the first families to homestead here from Scotland in 1873.

The valley has become known for more than potatoes. Sand dunes. Hot springs. An alligator farm. A UFO lookout campground.

“We’re a funky valley,” Davie says. And that is embodied by her small roadside compound.

Behind the artsy truck is a nine-hole mini golf course she set up — “mountain ghetto golf,” she calls it. It’s a $5 diversion for people waiting for grub. They do wait.

Among the signs plastered around — “PLEASE DON’T HARSH OUR MELLOW,” reads one, along with “HAVE THE DAY YOU DESERVE” and another welcoming misfits — is one reminding “GOOD FOOD TAKES TIME.” It’s slow made just as it was slowly derived from the Earth.

Davie trusts people will taste the difference.

“It just brings people back I think,” she says. “Like, ‘Oh, damn, this is what food is supposed to taste like.’”

In the winter, Davie shuts down the truck and shifts full time to the 20-foot storage unit of wood and tin next door. Here every morning she makes breakfast burritos and pours espresso with organic, free trade beans from the valley.

She’s a one-woman show, getting to work by 5 a.m. and, in the busy summer, getting home around 6 p.m. It’s hard work, but it’s better than the life she once lived as an addict.

“I wasted a lot of time,” Davie says. “But it’s never too late. Dreams do come true.”

ON THE MENU

Davie takes about as much pride in the Wolf Creek Brake Burner ($15 for two sliders plus a side, one for $7.50) as she does her Reuben ($14.50). The pastrami from Salida-based Scanga Meat Co. “is like bacon,” she says.

Scanga’s actual bacon is used on the 14er beef slider, complete with cream cheese and guacamole. The Winey Gringo features Davie’s own barbecue sauce — whipped with a heavy dose of cabernet wine — and topped with cheese and grilled onions.

That sauce is also the star of the pulled pork sandwich ($13 whole, $6.50 half), separating itself further with a homemade pineapple salsa.

On the lighter side, Davie offers a trio of wraps stuffed with mixed greens and other veggies, one with chicken and a southwest flair, another with chicken and a Greek flair, and another without the protein.

For breakfast, the southwest burrito ($8) is most popular. That bite from the chorizo? That’s infused tequila. The other varieties are simple — bacon or sausage egg and cheese or veggie — and all include Davie’s homegrown potatoes.

Bagels and biscuits and gravy ($9 whole order) are other options. The kids will appreciate the Piggy Fingers, pancakes wrapped in sausage (three for $6).

You’ll want a sweet treat to go. Davie makes a triple berry bread pudding smothered with RumChata frosting.

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