This "glade" is described as "an old field, sedge-grown, its plow-scars long healed over" (330). This is one of the signs that the MacCallum property was once a farm or plantation. There are apparently still some Negro tenants farming part of the property - i.e. the "two negro men" Bayard sees in the kitchen on his first evening at the place (336) - but on the whole, like this field, the MacCallum property seems to be reverting to nature, and used more for hunting and making moonshine, perhaps also breeding domestic animals, than for growing cotton or other commercial crops.
The kitchen where Mandy cooks and the MacCallums eat is, as is the case in many of the larger houses in Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha, in "a separate building" from the main house (336). This common southern design feature - a detached or semi-detached kitchen - helped keep the heat and odor of cooking out of the 'big house' and served as a low-tech form of fire prevention: if the kitchen caught fire it was less likely to burn the whole house down.
