MR Steve, sorry I'm so late in posting, but have been pretty busy playing here. First off, I don't have any horses, but there are a lot around here. I am in Cumberland county,about 20 miles outside of Crossville. In larger tracts land around here is going in the 3000 - 4000 per acre range. As for hay, I'm north/east of Crossville and we are surounded by the Catoosa Wildlife Area.(79,000 acres) I don't know the protocall but there are literally hundreds of hay fields in the Catoosa that the TWRA leases out to local farmers.
Prices in Cumberland county are sometimes a bit higher than surrounding counties, but you need to keep in mind that we have one of the lowest tax rates in the state. I am 1 mile from Morgan county, which has the highest tax rate in the state.
I retired a year ago and built my house here where I have 11 acres, mostly wooded.
Our well is 300' deep. we hit water at 125' but the flow rate was a bit low. We didn't hit any more going that deep but left us with a safe reserve. We have had no water problems here other than the water has ferrous iron and so we had an filter system installed. Our well complete with the filter system ran just over $5K.
As far as septic, we put in a 900 gallon system (rated for 3 bedroom house). The state permit cost $200 and included the soil test and mapping. I had the system installed for under $2500.00
I can't tell you much about local building contractors because my step son and I built the house ourselves. (Actually, I had a pole barn built the year before and we converted it into a 1500sq ft 2 bedroom home.) The house still needs some finishing work, but we started working on the building (poured concrete floor) in May and were living in it by mid July.
We have a neighbor who put a large addition on their home, the contractors started working last June and are still working on it.
