Land clearing in Woodbury, TN

Valley floor under Short Mountain

Woodbury sits at about 733 feet, down in the valley the East Fork of the Stones River cut. Six miles east-northeast, Short Mountain tops out at 2,074 feet under a sandstone cap. It’s the highest ground in Cannon County and an outlier of the Cumberland Plateau. That’s roughly 1,340 feet of rise in a short run, and it’s why one property here can hold creek bottom, a bench of old field, and a slope too steep to mow.

Down along the East Fork

That river starts up on Short Mountain and runs west past town toward Readyville. It runs fifty-four miles all told, the longest of the three Stones River forks. Hollis Creek and Carson Fork drain the ground west and southwest of town. Bottom land along any of them stays damp late into spring, and damp bottom land grows privet, honeysuckle and cane faster than anything up on the hill. Leave that strip alone a season or two and it seeds the rest of the tract.

Cedar, chert and thin ground

Up out of the bottom the soil goes thin and cherty over limestone, and that’s cedar ground. Let a hillside pasture sit two or three seasons and eastern red cedar comes in thick, with blackberry and sumac behind it. Once the cedar closes canopy the grass underneath is finished. This has long been white oak country. The basket makers and chair makers of Cannon County built their name on it. So on ground like that the job is pulling the understory out and leaving the oak standing.

Thirty miles southeast of Lebanon

Two ways at it from here. Down through Auburntown and in on Highway 145, which crosses Dividing Ridge and drops the last ten miles into town, or around by Murfreesboro and back east on 70S. Either one is a morning run, not a special trip. Shaun walks the ground before he quotes anything, and he’ll tell you plainly what he would leave standing.