De Spain Sharecropper Field (Location Key)

While cotton is the major crop in Yoknapatawpha, in "Barn Burning" Ab Snopes is supposed to grow corn on De Spain's land; both De Spain and the Justice of the Peace measure his penalty for ruining Mrs. de Spain's rug in "bushels of corn" (16, 18). The corn field is next to the tenant's cabin, and contains the "rich black soil" typical of the bottom land in Yoknapatawpha (17). The story briefly shows Ab's two sons at work in the field, "running a middle buster" (17). (A middle buster is a particular kind of plow, designed to create furrows for planting.) This is one of the few places in the fictions where Faulkner takes readers to Yoknapatawpha's fields as work sites.