Turning the soil

Since rice, called “pa-ku’.” is the chief agricultural product of the Igorot it will be considered in the following sections first, after which data of other vegetable products will be given.

Turning the soil for the annual crop of irrigated rice begins in the middle of December and continues nearly two months.  The labor of turning and fertilizing the soil and transplanting the young rice is all in progress at the same time —­ generally, too, in the same sementera.  Since each is a distinct process, however, I shall consider each separately.  Before the soil is turned in a sementera it has given up its annual crop of camotes, and the water has been turned on to soften the earth.  From two to twenty adults gather in a sementera, depending on the size of the plat, of which there are relatively few containing more than 10,000 square feet.  They commonly range from 30 square feet to 1,500 or 2,000.  The following description is one of several made in detail while watching the rice industry of the Bontoc Igorot.

The sementera is about 20 by 50 feet, or about 1,000 square feet, and lies in the midst of the large valley area between Bontoc and Samoki.  It is on the Samoki side of the river, but is the property of a Bontoc family.  There are two groups of soil turners in the sementera —­ three men in one, and two unmarried women, an older married woman, and a youth in the other.  At one end of the plat two, and part of the time three, women are transplanting rice.  Four men are bringing fertilizer for the soil.  Strange to say, each of the men in the group of three is “clothed” —­ one wears his breechcloth as a breechcloth, and the other two wear theirs simply as aprons, hanging loose in front.  Three of the men bringing fertilizer are entirely nude except for their girdles, since they ford the river with their loads between the sementera and Bontoc and do not care to wet their breechcloths; the other man wears a bladder bag hanging from his girdle as an apron.  One of the young women turning the soil wears a skirt; the other one and the old woman wear front-and-back aprons of camote vines; the youth with them is nude.  The three transplanters wear skirts, and one of them wears an open jacket.  Besides these there are three children in and about the sementera; one is a pretty, laughing girl of about 9 years; one is a shy, faded-haired little girl of 3 or 4 years; and the other is a fat chunk of a boy about 5 years.  All three are perfectly naked.  It is impossible to say what clothing these toilers wore before I went among them to watch their work, but it is certain they were not more clothed.