Land clearing in Dodson Branch, TN

Rim ground above the river

Dodson Branch sits at about 981 feet, up on the Eastern Highland Rim in Jackson County, between Cookeville and Gainesboro. The Cumberland valley is cut well down below it, and the difference shows up underfoot. Cherty silt loam over Mississippian limestone, shallow on the ridge crowns, deeper down in the hollows. Oak and hickory hold the good ground. Cedar takes the thin ground, and it takes it quickly.

Hay, cattle and a lot of woods

Jackson County runs on livestock, close to four sales dollars in five. Hay is the crop, better than twelve thousand acres of it. The biggest single use of farmland, though, is woodland: about thirty-four thousand acres, against twenty-one thousand in pasture. Farms here average 148 acres, and both the farm count and the acreage have slipped since 2017. When a place quits running cattle, the woods start taking the pasture back.

What comes in when the cattle leave

It starts on the fencerow. Multiflora rose and blackberry first, then sumac, locust and cedar walking out from the shade line. On thin ridge soil cedar sets fast and holds, and once it shades the grass out the field’s done as pasture. Ground like this wants the head run low, cutting at the root instead of topping it, so what grows back is thinner and slower every year.

The road up from Lebanon

Head east on US 70N through South Carthage, bear off at Chestnut Mound onto SR 53, and follow the Cumberland through Granville to Gainesboro. SR 135 carries you southeast from there. Cummins Mill Road leaves it a little south of the community and runs out to Cummins Falls, where the Blackburn Fork drops seventy-five feet toward the Roaring River. If it’s grown-up pasture you want back, or a building site and the lane to reach it, Shaun will walk the ground with you before he prices it.