Land clearing in Hickman, TN

Where the Rim starts to lift

The corner of Smith County running toward the DeKalb line is where the Central Basin gives out and the Highland Rim starts to climb. Hickman sits down in it at about 505 feet, ridges above the road and hollows below. Ridge shoulders hold thin soil over limestone, and thin soil grows red cedar, sassafras and blackberry faster than grass. In the hollows the dirt runs deeper and wetter, and poplar, box elder and honeysuckle fill it.

Ground that stopped being farmed

There’s more pasture in this county than cropland, and better than 21,000 head of cattle on small places. The average farm runs 167 acres, and Smith County lost fourteen percent of its farms in five years. Ground that size goes the same way. A hay field that stopped getting cut. A tobacco patch nobody set. A fencerow that widened until it took ten feet off the row end. Cedar and briars take all three, and a bush hog rides over the top without killing a stem.

Hollows that hold water late

Everything falling south off this ground works into Smith Fork Creek, then the Caney Fork below Center Hill Dam, then the Cumberland at Carthage. Bottom like that stays soft well into spring, so the work waits on dirt dry enough to carry a machine without rutting it. Growth down in the wet is heavier than it looks from the road. Greenbrier, multiflora rose and saplings stand so close you can’t see forty feet. What comes off is better left where it falls.

Out the Hickman Highway

It’s about twenty-four miles from Lebanon. Take US 70 east to I-40, off at the Gordonsville exit, then south on 264, the Hickman Highway. Gordonsville sits a couple of miles up the road, New Middleton a few miles west. Shaun walks a place himself before he puts a number on it. On ground like this the ridge and the hollow are two different jobs, and you can’t tell which is which from the road.