Forgotten Fencerows

The Winter months are well suited for spending time going on long walks on my farm, which is located near the small settlement of Bybee in Cocke County, Tennessee. There are no pressing tasks awaiting completion, so on Winter days I have time to explore areas of the farm which would be impossible during the hectic farming season.

Most of the leaves from the trees have long since fallen, which afford an open view of the farm’s details. When I bought my farm in 1978, much of the land had long since returned to nature, with old fields and hillside pastures being covered over with new growth cedars and other trees.

When visiting the farm, I always have a sketchbook with me, and over the years I have recorded many of my favorite scenes, which include detailed studies of the old original fencerows on the farm.

Over the years, I have referred to them as “forgotten fencerows.” They remain as living testimony to the farm’s early history. The trees which line the fencerows are of great size and are well over 100 years in age and bear the scars of countless years of storms and lightning strikes. 

Many of the old trees have fencing wire running through them, indicating that trees grew around the wire. For me, the most amazing thing about many of the old fencerows is the fact that they were erected on such steep terrain, much of which feels as though if you took one step back, you would fall to the hollows far below.

One of my favorite trees is a large cedar that has been dead for many years but still standing strong and defying nature to cause it to return to the earth. Most of the old growth trees that line the fencerows are beech, black oak, white oak, chestnut oak, black locust and cedar.

After standing along these old fencerows for so many years, each of the old trees have taken on their own weather worn personalities with their own unique scars of aging. On many occasions, I will sit for a long while observing those old trees and try to have images of those who once farmed my land and of the fencerows that they constructed.

– John Coykendall, Blackberry Farm Master Gardener