Every day, I have someone emailing asking where I’ve been for the last month or so. (That’s not true, but it’s a good way to start my first post in nearly a month.) Well, I have been busy! For a while now, Kari-Lise and I have spent any free time hard at work building out a patio/gazebo/outdoor cooking space/chef’s garden that I am calling our Smoker Paddock.

For years, when we lived in Seattle, I struggled along as a halfassed pitmaster with a cheap offset Char-Griller. I ran that thing into the ground and eventually said goodbye when we moved to the island. Since then, I have been sans smoker for the first time in almost a decade, which has made me sad. But this spring, I finally bit the bullet and ordered the offset smoker of my dreams, but I needed a place to store it, and I wanted that place to be a space I could use year-round, even during the rainy PNW winters. Hence, the smoker paddock.

Check out our build progress below and get a small glimpse at how “helpful” Uly was during the entire process.

The idea was to build a covered area to keep the rain off my head and smoker, while also allowing for an outdoor dining space in warmer months. We took it to the next level by surrounding it with a chef’s garden, and Kari-Lise promptly filled it with plenty of fresh herbs. (Details below for those who are interested.) The paddock is only a few steps from the kitchen, so picking what I need on a whim will be easy. Everything in there is perennial, so it should be nice and green year-round.

We’re really excited to be on the other side. This project ended up being a lot more work than we had initially anticipated. But the flagstone creates a nice through line, as we used up all the leftover flagstone from our garden path project we completed this winter/early spring. Smoker ships this weekend, and I’m excited to get to work. I have so many ideas percolating.

Much more on that to come.

Plants in the chef’s garden: arbequina olive, bay, dot wells french thyme, lemon creeping thyme, tuscan blue rosemary, grapefruit mint, woodcote sage, medow sage, garlic chive, french tarragon, sweet marjoram, Greek oregano—I do want to get some Mexican oregano going, since I end up using that often. That’s the one big piece that is missing.