Land clearing in Murfreesboro, TN

Rock close to the surface

Murfreesboro sits in the Central Basin at about 610 feet, and the limestone is never far under your boots. Stones River Cedar Glade, three miles northwest of downtown, is open limestone outcrop with very shallow soil, and Barfield Crescent Park runs its trails through the same sinks and glades. Cedar takes ground like that because nothing else holds in it. A mulching head has to run high and read the rock. The litter along a glade edge will hide a ledge.

Land coming out of production

Rutherford County gave up 16,876 acres of farmland between 2017 and 2022, and the growth here is a good part of why. West toward Blackman, south past Barfield, hay ground that stopped getting cut a few years back goes to cedar and briar clear to the fence line. Twenty acres a neighbor used to farm can close up faster than anybody plans for, and the corners have to be findable before a surveyor can work.

Sinks, seeps and the West Fork

Karst runs under all of it. The battlefield ground northwest of town is pocked with limestone sinks that take rainwater straight down, so what gets left on top matters. Mulch lying where it falls holds the surface instead of sending bare dirt toward a sink, or down Lytle Creek and Overall Creek into the West Fork. Privet is on the invasive list there, and in a wet creek bottom it comes back thicker unless the whole stand goes at once.

Down 231 from Lebanon

It’s a little over thirty miles from Lebanon, straight down 231 across the East Fork at Walter Hill. The ground barely changes on the drive, the same shallow soil, the same cedar in the fence rows, rock a few inches under. What changes is how fast the lots are getting split. Murfreesboro is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, and land that comes out of hay here doesn’t sit open for long.