Land clearing in Eagleville, TN

Top of the Harpeth

Most of Rutherford County drains into the Stones River. This corner doesn’t. The Harpeth rises here and turns northwest, and it doesn’t reach the Cumberland until Ashland City. The gage in town has thirty-four square miles above it. Concord Creek, Puckett Branch, Kelley Creek and Cheatham Branch feed it. Small water, shaded, slow to dry. Bottoms that hold water late grow hard, and sycamore, elm and ash come up thick along the bank.

A soil series called Eagleville

The series was established in Rutherford County in 1974 and typed fifteen miles east of here, toward Fosterville. Clay laid down by water, sitting on limestone twenty to forty inches down, with the water table inside a foot and a half of the surface through winter and spring. It floods and it ponds. Ground like that wants a dry window before anything heavy crosses it.

Cedar on the thin side

Off the bottoms it goes the other way. This is Central Basin ground near seven hundred seventy feet, limestone close enough to the surface that glade openings show through the pasture. Thin soil over rock is what red cedar wants. Ground that misses a couple of seasons under the bush hog shows cedar before anything else. On soil that shallow, cut cedar left lying where it fell beats a burn pile in the corner.

Horse ground, and the drive

Parcels run big out here, a few acres up to a whole working farm, and plenty are zoned so stock can stay. Land laid out that way usually wants the same three things. Grazing back, a fencerow opened along a Rocky Glade or a Bunker Hill, the back of the place walkable again. Board fence and woven wire want slow work beside them, and a gate is worth more shut than open. Southwest of Lebanon, it’s 231 down through Walterhill and Murfreesboro, then west on 99 through Rockvale. That’s out of the Stones River bottoms and over the divide into the Harpeth.