Land clearing in Norene, TN

Twelve miles out Cainsville Road

The Norene crossroads sits about twelve miles south-southeast of the Lebanon square, straight out Cainsville Road. That’s State Route 266, which keeps going south through Lascassas and Walterhill all the way to Smyrna. The ground climbs on the way out. Lebanon sits at 528 feet and Norene at 741. Two hundred feet doesn’t sound like much until you see the soil get thinner behind it.

Thin ground over limestone

Limestone lies close under these fields. Across Wilson County it comes bare in places, flat rock with the soil stripped off it, and nothing tall holds there. Shallow ground decides what grows back after a field is cleared and how fast. Red cedar is the tell. It’s the tree Lebanon got its name from, and it takes a hayfield the year after the hay stops getting cut, with blackberry and briars filling in behind.

Down in the creek bottoms

Jug Creek runs a mile and a half south of the crossroads and Florida Creek a couple of miles southwest. Soil is deeper in those bottoms and holds water longer, so the problem changes on the way down the hill, privet and honeysuckle instead of cedar, and a fenceline that’s gone in a season. One farm can have both, and they don’t clear the same way.

Once through, not every spring

A bush hog tops brush, and the stump answers by coming back thicker. A mulching head takes the stem down into the dirt instead, so what stands up the next year is seedlings a mower can walk over rather than a wall. Winter suits ground like this. Leaves down, nothing nesting, bottoms firm enough to hold a machine. Norene got its post office in 1878, when it still went by Henderson’s Cross Roads, and this has been hay and grass and stock country the whole time.