There are two varieties of sementeras —­ garden patches, called “pay-yo’” —­ in the Bontoc area, the irrigated and the unirrigated.  The irrigated sementeras grow two crops annually, one of rice by irrigation during the dry season and the other of camotes, “sweet potatoes,” grown in the rainy season without irrigation.  The unirrigated sementera is of two kinds.  One is the mountain or side-hill plat of earth, in which camotes, millet, beans, maize, etc., are planted, and the other is the horizontal plat (probably once an irrigated sementera), usually built with low terraces, sometimes lying in the pueblo among the houses, from which shoots are taken for transplanting in the distant sementeras and where camotes are grown for the pigs.  Sometimes they are along old water courses which no longer flow during the dry season; such are often employed for rice during the rainy season.

The unirrigated mountain-side sementera, called “fo-ag’,” is built by simply clearing the trees and brush from a mountain plat.  No effort is made to level it and no dike walls are built.  Now and then one is hemmed in by a low boundary wall.

The irrigated sementeras are built with much care and labor.  The earth is first cleared; the soil is carefully removed and placed in a pile; the rocks are dug out; the ground shaped, being excavated and filled until a level results.  This task for a man whose only tools are sticks is no slight one.  A huge bowlder in the ground means hours —­ often days —­ of patient, animal-like digging and prying with hands and sticks before it is finally dislodged.  When the ground is leveled the soil is put back over the plat, and very often is supplemented with other rich soil.  These irrigated sementeras are built along water courses or in such places as can be reached by turning running water to them.  Inasmuch as the water must flow from one to another, there are practically no two sementeras on the same level which are irrigated from the same water course.  The result is that every plat is upheld on its lower side, and usually on one or both ends, by a terrace wall.  Much of the mountain land is well supplied with bowlders and there is an endless water-worn supply in the beds of all streams.  All terrace walls are built of these undressed stones piled together without cement or earth.  These walls are called “fa-ning’.”  They are from 1 to 20 and 30 feet high and from a foot to 18 inches wide at the top.  The upper surface of the top layer of stones is quite flat and becomes the path among the sementeras.  The toiler ascends and descends among the terraces on stone steps made by single rocks projecting from the outside of the wall at regular intervals and at an angle easy of ascent and descent (see Pl.  LIII).

These stone walls are usually weeded perfectly clean at least once each year, generally at the time the sementera is prepared for transplanting.  This work falls to the women, who commonly perform it entirely nude.  At times a scanty front-and-back apron of leaves is worn tucked under the girdle.