The millet
I am told, is harvested similarly to the rice, and the clean-stalked
bunches are tied up in the same way -- only the bunches are four or
five times larger.
The fruit head, or ears, of the maize is said to be plucked off the
stalks in the fields as the American farmer gathers green corn or
seed corn. It is stored still covered with its husks.
The camote harvest is continued fairly well throughout the
year. Undoubtedly some camotes are dug every day in the year from the
dry mountain-side sementeras, but the regular harvest occurs during
November and December, during which time the camotes are gathered
from the irrigated sementeras preparatory to turning the soil for
the transplanting of new rice.
Women are the camote gatherers. I never saw men, nor even boys,
gathering camotes. At no other time does the Igorot woman look so
animal like as when she toils among the camote vines, standing with
legs straight and feet spread, her body held horizontal, one hand
grasping the middle of her short camote stick and the other in the soil
picking out the unearthed camotes. She looks as though she never had
stood erect and never would stand erect on two feet. Thus she toils day
after day from early morning till dusk that she and her family may eat.
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