This "glade" is described in Flags in the Dust 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.
In Flags in the Dust 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.
