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Feature article
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Talkin’ turkey: A primer on poultry drives
By Fred Sauceman
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We don’t think much nowadays about how turkeys get from farm to market to oven. But from around 1884 to 1920, in rural, mountainous Hancock County, Tennessee, it was quite an undertaking.
Imagine moving hundreds of turkeys 35 miles over rugged land and rough water. Imagine keeping track of which turkeys are yours and which belong to your neighbor. Imagine what happens at evening roosting time when the turkeys take control and head for the trees. Imagine your disappointment when, at the end of that long turkey trek, you don’t get the price you’d hoped the birds would bring.
Scott Collins of Sneedville isn’t old enough to remember the legendary turkey drives of his home county, but he has studied the strange practice as much as anyone.
Scott can talk turkey. After a 32-year career as a court administrator, he now negotiates business loans for Citizens Bank of East Tennessee in Sneedville. On his office wall is a photograph, taken, he thinks, around 1912. It depicts dozens of turkeys on the grounds of the Hancock County Courthouse, about to be driven in the direction of the Clinch River.
“Hundreds of turkeys would be gathered in the springtime each year, and about this time in the fall,” according to Scott. “They were first taken down to the Clinch River, south of Sneedville. At that time there was no bridge, so they had to be taken across the river by ferry.
“The ferry was filled with turkeys, pulled to the other side by a cable, where somebody would stay with the turkeys, and then they’d pull the ferry back and take a few more over. This went on until they got all the turkeys to the south side of the river.”
From there, they were herded down a path to Morristown.
“It made no difference where they were, if dark came, the turkeys decided where they wanted to roost,” Scott tells me. “And of course farmers carried along feed, because the turkeys would lose weight along the way. What a task that must have been.”
After all the labor and hardship, Scott says the turkey herders were totally at the mercy of the buyers in Morristown and Rogersville. Sometimes the farmers got the price they expected; oftentimes they didn’t. But they couldn’t turn back and had to accept the offer.
Although the turkey drives seem humorous from the perspective of the 21st century, Scott says they were typical of the extremes people in the mountains had to go to in order to survive.
“The turkey drive was a way for folks to make some extra money to feed their families, especially at Christmastime,” Scott continues. “They were hoping to get enough cash to get them through the Christmas holidays. And it was a matter of survival. People in this area had it tough, and they still have it tough.”
Scott tells his turkey story to schoolchildren around Hancock County, graphically describing how the turkeys must have “moped along,” in no hurry to get anywhere, and how some of them likely escaped along the way.
Improved transportation, and probably accumulated fatigue, ended the turkey drives. Scott Collins says people today have a hard time believing the drives ever occurred. But they did, and that photograph of soon-to-be-herded turkeys searching the ground for food in front of the Hancock County Courthouse is proof.
Note: Thanks to Wayne Winkler, manager of radio station WETS-FM, for first telling me about the turkey drives.
--------GoTriCities--------
Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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