Hardin Brothers Landscaping

After a relatively wet spring, we’ve had very little rain this summer. Dry conditions make it impossible to smooth out our roads with the tractor, but thankfully our recent afternoon thunderstorms have helped out a lot. (It takes rain to loosen the gravel so that the tractor can grade and smooth out the roads.)

Roadside Weedeating

All through the late spring, summer and early fall, we work hard to keep our roadsides at Amber Ranches weedeated. Weedeating prevents our ditches and roadsides from growing up into trees, thus allowing our ditches, culverts and roads to function properly. Besides that, it also allows for better roadside visibility and looks good.

Typically, we start weedeating at the bottom of Amber Ranches and work our way up to the top. We hit our two main roads first (Amber Drive and Nicholas Knoll), but all the secondary roads are eventually weedeated as well.

We usually weedeat our powerlines once a year as well. It takes too long to cut them every time we weedeat, but we do it once a year to keep it down and manageable. By waiting until late summer/fall to weedeat powerlines, it also allows the wildflowers to bloom.

Personal Lot Weedeating

For those who wish to keep their personal yards and lots maintained, we will gladly weedeat them down in order to keep them looking good and from growing up into woods.

Typically, we like to weedeat the immediate yards and driveways for folks at Amber Ranches every few weeks (at least once a month) during the summer just to keep those areas more maintained. (Of course, this depends on how fast things grow on each individual property).

As for those sections outside of the immediate yard and driveway area, we prefer to weedeat them 2-3 times a year (June, August, October (more or less)) in order to keep them from growing up into woods. This also keeps our development looking nice and maintained. Please contact us if you are interested in our services. Below are some before and after photos of lots that we’ve weedeated this year…

Photos of Summer

Limestone Cove Massacre

As some of you may already know, the people of Buladean and many other areas of the Appalachian Mountains were very divided during the American Civil War. Those from our area who served for the Confederacy were often drafted by the Confederacy’s 1863 Conscription Act. Some of these men remained with the Confederacy throughout the war, but others deserted the Confederacy as soon as they had the chance in order to get back to their families in the mountains.

Some of these deserters would then hide out in remote, mountainous areas where they were less likely to be found. The North Carolina/Tennessee state line was a common place for deserters due to state jurisdiction issues. Being on the state line, Buladean was a hideout for deserters, moonshiners, and other outlaw activity.

Some men from this area went off to join Union regiments in nearby Tennessee or Kentucky, while others simply stayed around and joined the local Confederate Home Guard or western North Carolina’s Union regiment (3rd NC Mounted Infantry) in order to fight against the Confederacy.

In the mountains of North Carolina, the Civil War wasn’t simply a war between the states. Here, it was a war between people of the same state, the same county, and sometimes even the same holler.

A group of these North Carolina Unionists were captured and killed just across the state border in Unicoi County (Limestone Cove). The execution of these men is called the Limestone Cove Massacre.

The story of the Limestone Cove Massacre is told a few different ways, but basically a group of Unionists from western North Carolina crossed over the state line into Tennessee to enlist in one of East Tennessee’s Union regiments.

There was an underground network of guides that would lead Southern Unionists across the South to join up with Union regiments. These guides would stop to stay the night with their recruits at the households of known Unionists in the area. One of these households was in Limestone Cove and the owner was Dr. David Bell.

While staying at Dr. Bell’s house in November of 1863, a group of Unionists were ambushed by a Confederate regiment and then executed. The details of the execution vary, but about nine Unionists were killed and buried in a mass grave which you can visit today. Here’s a section about the massacre from a newspaper article describing the massacre in 1863…

“Witcher’s company of cavalry, piloted by Nathanial Brown of Washington County, took James Bell, the brother of Dr. Bell of Greene county, forced him to lay his head on a chunk in the road, and with stones and clubs beat his brains out. THey took some of the blood and brains and rubbed them under his wife’s nose, cursing her, and telling her to smell them! They then burned the house down and its contents with it, allowing her and her children to look on at the flames.” (Brownlow’s Knoxville Whig, Saturday April 16, 1864)

If you’d like to visit the location where the massacre occurred, simply drive down Broad Branch Road, take a right on Hwy 226 (which turns into Hwy 107 in Tennessee). Before you get to the town of Unicoi, TN, take a left onto Deer Haven Rd. The Cemetery in there on the right. You can see the graveyard and historical marker from the main highway. It’s only 11.2 miles away from the entrance on Amber Ranches.