Brunswick stew simmers in cast iron pots, while men with wooden paddles stir the bubbling mixture. From start to finish, cooking takes at least 16 hours.

But a few hours after the 51st Oktoc Country Store opens on Saturday morning, one thing is certain: every drop of stew will be sold out.

“Most of those men do stir through the night,” Oktoc Garden Club President and Oktoc Community Club Vice-President Robin Blocker said. “We’ll start the stew … and it is stirred all night long all the way through the event until we sell out. And we typically sell out. We make 150 gallons. It’s a lot of stew.”

Blocker said the Oktoc Country Store is open from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. Saturday at the clubhouse on the corner of Oktoc Road and Robinson Road. The store includes a baked goods sale, a photo booth, hay bales, boiled peanuts, a quilt raffle, and of course, the Brunswick stew.

Lifelong Oktoc resident Anna Marie Rasberry said the store began in 1970 as a fundraiser for repairs to the club buildings.

“The community club currently meets in an old church that’s 100 years old and a one-room school house that’s over 100 years old,” Rasberry said. “Those buildings need repairs from time to time, and so a fundraiser was needed… and so the Oktoc Country Store was developed.”

Rasberry said the country store has met every year except for two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing most of the traditions all the while.

However, Blocker said over time, the fundraiser has also benefited the Volunteer Fire Department in District 5, and members of the department often come out to help stir the stew.

Hellen and Carlton Polk have helped with the Oktoc Country Store for more than 20 years. This year, they are managing the stew for the first time.

Hellen Polk said boiling the meat for the stew started at 5 p.m. Friday in one large cast iron pot. Overnight attendees watch the meat as it cooks overnight, until it is transferred into 12 small cast iron kettles the next morning. 

At 4:30 a.m. the day-of, chicken and rice and other ingredients are added into the smaller pots, which are stirred continuously until the stew is served. Altogether, the stew includes about 300 pounds of meat, Carlton Polk said, and the cooking process also leads to conversation.

“I enjoy it because a whole bunch of us get together, and you’re stirring, but you also have a lot of time to talk about what’s going on in the neighborhood and everything,” Carlton Polk said.

“It’s a bonding time,” Hellen Polk added.

While the stew may be the most obvious star of the country store, Blocker said the women of the Oktoc Garden Club have been working for months to piece together a quilt that will be raffled off during the store.

“In reality, the quilt, we start that right at the new year,” Blocker said. “We get ready and start picking out what the design is going to be and get ready to start getting stuff together. But a lot of these ladies have been in it for so long that we all know what we’re supposed to do.”

The members of the Oktoc Garden Club have also been working “all week” to create homemade baked goods and jarred goods, Blocker said. Just like the Brunswick stew is traditional for the community club, specific baked goods are traditional for specific club members.

“Most of the ladies kind of do the same thing every year,” Blocker said. “There’s a particular couple of ladies that always make the caramel cakes. There’s a particular lady that always makes the pecan pies and the apple pies.”

Despite the club members’ duties often remaining the same, Blocker said each year, the country store runs into unique planning challenges. But the reason the country store is always successful is because the club members come together.

“It takes a community,” Blocker said.

With the Oktoc Country Store reaching its 51st year, Blocker said some of the members are starting to get older, making the store more difficult to put together. But Blocker said she has fond memories of eating Brunswick stew when she was younger, and she hopes to pass the tradition along to the next generation.

“It’s been going on for so long and I just don’t want to see it go,” Blocker said. “Even if there’s just two families left, we’re going to keep it going for as long as we can keep it going.”