The “farm-to-be” that we are living on, Yocona Bottoms Farm, is located in Yocona which is 8 miles South of Oxford and the University of Mississippi and is classified as a rural community within Lafayette County.
The 19.8 acres of land was purchased by Doug in October, 2007. The land includes 12+ acres of alluvial soil on the Yocona River floodplain and 7 acres of grass pasture on the slope of the valley. It gently slopes North back away from the house and the road into the Bottoms, where water collects around a few marshy fields, a small stream and an old cattle-pond. Just beyond the property line, the Yocona River winds along hunting camps and cotton fields. South, the land rises steadily to climb over a heavily-forested ridge into Water Valley. Plans for the land include building a “green” home, guest houses, a space for community gathering, and community organic agriculture. In addition, we hope to repair and restore a small section of the nearly destroyed natural ecology of the Yocona River Bottoms.
View from the Bottoms
According to the University of Mississippi’s Faulkner Glossary, Yocona (pronounced “YOK ´ nuh“) is the name of both an actual river and the community nearby. The word is an apparent abbreviated form of the Chickasaw term Yoknapatawpha (pronounced “Yok ´nuh puh TAW ´fuh“). The name “Yoknapatawpha” is apparently derived from two Chickasaw words: Yoconaand petopha, meaning “split land” and is the the setting for most of William Faulkner’s novels and short stories and patterned upon Faulkner’s actual home in Lafayette County, Mississippi. Some early maps of the area referred to the river as the Yockney-Patafa, a transliteration of the river’s native name. According to Faulkner, Yoknapatawpha means “water flowing slow through the flatland.” Arthur F. Kinney, however, postulates an additional possibility for the origin and meaning of the name. In Go Down Moses: The Miscegenation of Time, he suggests Faulkner might have consulted a 1915 Dictionary of the Choctaw Language in which the word is broken down as follows:
ik patafo, a., unplowed.
patafa, pp., split open; plowed, furrowed; tilled.
yakni, n., the earth; …soil; ground; nation; …district….
yakni patafa, pp., furrowed land; fallowed land.
Hence, Kinney suggests, the literal meaning of “Yoknapatawpha” in Choctaw would by “plowed or cultivated land or district” (21-22).
See The Farm page for a more detailed description of Yocona Bottoms Farm.
Below is a brief pictorial tour of Yocona Bottoms Farm courtesy of Alison and Sophia, followed by a few short video clips . . .
Alison and Sophia take a look around the site that will soon be our garden
A view of the stream and path down to the Bottoms
Homestead and garden boxes
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