Southern Spain: A Country Calendar

The calendar of the Andalusian countryside:

In the new year, the women picked olives. This was a woman's task. Parties of women in white head-kerchiefs and brightly colored dresses went out, accompanied by their young children. The girls of the village were sent up into the trees, and if any man was seen there would at once be an outcry and a headlong descent to the ground--for none of these girls wore drawers under her skirts. The olives were collected in striped rugs laid out on the ground, then tipped into panniers and carried off to the oil mill. Here a donkey, revolving in the shadowy mill-house, pulled a cone-shaped stone to crush the olives and send a stream of oil trickling into the vats. (Similar olive-groves in blighted areas of the Holy Land bear crops only every two years, simply because there the men harvest the fruit by knocking it down with sticks, rather than climbing for it. In Greece, men climb and their women stand under the trees to gather the olives as they fall.)

While the women picked the olives, their men pruned the vines and fruit trees.

Then came the planting of onions and garlic, the principal cash crops of the area, and the season to hoe the corn. At Easter, the beans blossomed. Soon after, these were gathered and the potatoes planted.

In May, down on the coast, first barley and then wheat would be cut. As each week passed, this harvest would continue, but with each week, it would be in a village a little higher into the mountains--four days later for every three hundred feet in elevation . . . till in July the farmers in the author's vicinity would be cutting their fields with short curved sickles. Each reaper would seize a bunch of stalks in his left hand, and sever them with a swing of his right hand. The corn was then collected in panniers and carried on donkey-back to the threshing-floors. When the moon shone, the barley would be reaped and collected by night as well as day, since if it gets too dry the grain falls out.

Even as the wheat was being cut, the fields were replanted with Indian corn. Lentils and chick peas and vetches were picked. All this happened before the threshing-time.

In August, threshing would begin. Unthreshed corn was spread on the circular paved threshing-floors that were spread about on the mountainside--dotted wherever a breath of wind might blow. Two mules were harnessed to a plank of wood armed with iron or quartzite teeth, and a man balancing on the plank held their reins. Another man stood by and brandished a long whip, making the mules canter round and round; as soon as they tired, another team took their place; all day long this circus would revolve, the drivers leaning back against their reins like charioteers, the coats of the mules glistening with sweat and the whip cracking loudly.

Then when darkness fell, the threshed ears would be winnowed. A gang of men and women would appear on the threshing-floor, someone would strum a guitar, and a lantern would be lit. With nightfall, the wind would start to blow. When the gusts seemed strong enough, the men would take long wooden forks of ash or nettle-wood, and begin tossing up the ears. All night this would go on, and at sunrise an onlooker might see the chaff streaming away like snow in the wind and the heavy grain falling, bright as golden coins, onto the heap of corn.

After the threshing was finished, the grapes had to be picked and trodden in the wine-vats. Then the rest of the autumn fruits were gathered. Tomatoes and pimentos and figs were spread on mats on the roofs and dried; chestnuts were picked; onions and garlic and potatoes dug up.

The maize was husked with a special ritual. A party of young girls and boys would meet in a rooftop attic and pass around a jug of wine and a plate of cakes or roasted chestnuts; whenever a girl turned up a cob with red grains upon it, she would strike all the young men lightly on the forehead with her knife; whenever a boy found one, he would hug all the girls in turn. (He was not allowed to kiss them or take liberties; kissing was such a serious operation that some girls would not allow any man to kiss them without marrying her first.)

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