Land clearing in Christiana, TN

Rock closer than it looks

Ridley limestone sits under Christiana, and it sits close to the top. The survey maps the shallow ground here as Gladeville and Barfield, stone within three to twenty inches, flat slabs lying loose on the surface, with deeper Talbott clay between them. Cedar is what comes up on ground like that, and briars follow it in. A field on thin soil looks clean in March and is closed in by the second summer after somebody quits cutting. The head works above the rock, not into it.

The knobs toward Hoovers Gap

Southeast of town the basin floor quits and the Highland Rim knobs stand up. Christiana sits at 699 feet. Hickory Hill and Soapstone Hill both clear 1,200. Oak and hickory hold those slopes; cedar takes the thin shoulders. Ground that steep doesn’t want a whole face cleared. It wants a lane. Christiana already has a trail we cut that way, mulched open through heavy brush.

Soft ground between the forks

West Fork of the Stones River runs a few miles west of town, Middle Fork about four miles east. Between the rock and the water lie the flats, Tupelo and Roellen bottoms that hold wet and stay soft into spring, with Capshaw silt loam on the terraces above them, slow to give up water. One farm can carry both conditions, rock on the ridge and clay in the bottom. The wet half is worth leaving until it firms up; the ridge will keep.

Forty-four miles from Lebanon

It’s about forty-four miles south, past Murfreesboro, to where the Shelbyville Highway and the CSX Chattanooga line run through Christiana. That line came through before the Civil War. Most of the ground is hay, cattle and fencerow, with new subdivisions filling in behind it. On a place like that, what’s worth getting back is a field that cuts clean and a fencerow a man can walk.