Several harvesters, from four to a dozen, labor together in each sementera.  They begin at one side and pass across the plat, gathering all grain as they pass.  Men and women work together, but women are recognized the better harvesters, since their hands are more nimble.  Each fruited stalk is grasped shortly below the fruit head, and the upper section or joint of the stalk, together with the fruit head and topmost leaf, is pulled off.  As most Bontoc Igorot are right-handed, the plucked grain is laid in the left hand, the fruit heads projecting beyond between the thumb and forefinger while the leaf attached to each fruit head lies outside and below the thumb.  When the proper amount of grain is in hand (a bunch of stalks about an inch in diameter) the useless leaves, all arranged for one grasp of the right hand, are stripped off and dropped; the bunch of fruit heads, topping a 6-inch section of clean stalk or straw is handed to a person who may be called the binder.  This person in all harvests I have seen was a woman.  She binds all the grain three, four, or five persons can pluck; and when there is one binder for every three gatherers the binder finds some time also to gather.

The binder passes a small, prepared strip of bamboo twice around the palay stalks, holds one end between her teeth and draws the binding tight; then she twists the two ends together, and the bunch is secure.  The bunch, the manojo of the Spaniard, the sin fing-e’ of the Igorot, is then piled up on the binder’s head until a load is made.  Before each bunch is placed on the pile the fruitheads are spread out like an open fan.  These piles are never completed until they are higher than the woman’s arm can reach —­ several of the last bunches being tossed in place, guided only by the tips of the fingers touching the butt of the straw.  The women with their heads loaded high with ripened grain are striking figures —­ and one wonders at the security of the loads.

When a load is made it is borne to the transportation baskets in some part of the harvested section of the sementera, where it is gently slid to the earth over the front of the head as the woman stoops forward.  It is loaded into the basket at once unless there is a scarcity of binders in the field, in which case it awaits the completion of the harvest.

In all agricultural labors the Igorot is industrious, yet his humor, ever present with him, brings relief from continued toil.  The harvest field is no exception, since there is much quiet gossip and jest during the labors.

In 1903 rice was first harvested May 2.  The harvest continued one month, the crop of a sementera being gathered here and there as it ripened.  The Igorot calls this first harvest month the “moon of the small harvest.”  During June the crop is ripened everywhere, and the harvest is on in earnest; the Igorot speaks of it as the “moon of the all harvest.”

I had no view of the harvest of millet or maize; however, I have seen in the pueblo much of each grain of some previous harvest.  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.