Land clearing in Baxter, TN

Where the rim starts to break

Baxter sits at 1,027 feet on the Eastern Highland Rim. Eight miles west at Buffalo Valley, where Big Indian Creek meets the Caney Fork, the ground is down to 518. That drop is the rim coming apart along its western edge, and the dirt on top says so. Up on the flat, Fort Payne chert and Warsaw limestone lie close under the topsoil, shallow, gravelly, rocky where the slope starts. Cedar and briars do fine on that long after better dirt has closed a canopy.

Creek bottoms below the flat

Mine Lick Creek runs off toward Center Hill Lake, and south of here Cane Creek loops under the two-hundred-foot ridge at Window Cliffs. Bottom ground along either one holds water late. Privet and honeysuckle get tall enough down there to hide the bank. None of that is hard to cut. Timing is the harder part. You don’t want a machine in there until the bottom dries out.

Fields that quit being fields

The trail out at Window Cliffs runs through old fields and successional forest, and that phrase covers a lot of ground around Baxter. Land drops out of hay or pasture, nobody touches it for three or four seasons, and sassafras, blackberry and cedar take the low corners first. Sun-fed edge growth like that is what a mulching head is built for.

Straight out 70N

Forty miles east of Lebanon. US 70N is the surface route the whole way, through Elmwood, Chestnut Mound, then Baxter. I-40 exit 280 comes in from the south. The rail line runs right through the middle of town. That is what Baxter grew up on, and where the name came from. Jere Baxter built the Tennessee Central. A few acres off the highway or up toward Bloomington Springs is the size of job the mulcher suits. Walk the line with Shaun and point at the corners you want opened, a fence line somebody can walk again, or a view back off the flat.