Land clearing in Manchester, TN

Hardpan under the topsoil

Rim ground around Manchester runs two to four feet of silt over weathered limestone, with a fragipan eighteen to thirty-six inches down and sour, strongly acid soil above it. The fragipan is a dense layer water barely moves through. Roots stay shallow because they have to, so it holds wet after a rain and bakes hard by August. What fills in is sweetgum, maple and briars down every fencerow. A field taken out of hay here does not stay open long.

Where Hunt Creek meets Huckleberry

Those two come together in poorly drained ground southeast of town and make the Little Duck. It runs six and a half miles, winding through Manchester and joining the Duck at Old Stone Fort. Both fall over cascades in the last stretch before they meet. Bottom ground along either stays soft well past spring, and privet gets in and builds a wall of itself under the canopy. A mulching head takes privet where it stands, which counts on ground you’d rather cross once.

Flat top, bank that falls away

West of the city both rivers have cut deep gorges, with steep bluffs over them through the park. A tract on that side is really two properties: a flat top somebody wants back in grass, and a bank dropping to water that gets walked before anything runs near it. Ground shaped that way rarely calls for a cleared field. It calls for a line you can walk, sight of the water again, and the good timber left standing.

Getting down there from Lebanon

It’s south through Murfreesboro, then I-24 southeast, the land climbing off the Central Basin onto the Rim the whole way. Exits 110, 111 and 114 all put you into town. US 41 comes up the middle as Hillsboro Boulevard, and Woodbury Highway drops in the back way from Cannon County. Manchester sits inside the fourteen counties Shaun covers. He’d rather drive a place and walk it than guess off a satellite picture.