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.

Storing

No palay is carried to the a-lang’, the separate granary building, or to the dwelling for the purpose of being stored until the entire crop of the sementera is harvested.  It may be carried part way, but there it halts until all the grain is ready to be carried home.

It is spread out on the ground or on a roof in the sun two or three days to dry before storing.  When the grain is to be stored away an old man —­ any man —­ asks a blessing on it that it may make men, hogs, and chickens well, strong, and fat when they consume it.  This ceremony is called “ka-fo’-kab,” and the man who performs it is known by the title of “in-ka-fa’.”

The Igorot granary, the a-lang’, is a “hip-roofed” structure about 8 feet long, 5 wide, 4 feet high at the sides and 6 at the ridgepole.  Its sides are built of heavy pine planks, which are inserted in grooved horizontal timbers, the planks being set up vertically.  The floor is about a foot from the earth.  The roof consists of a heavy, thick cover of long grass securely tied on a pole frame.  It is seldom that a granary stands alone —­ usually there are two or more together, and Bontoc has several groups of a dozen each, as shown in Pl.  LXXII.  When built together they are better protected from the rain storms.  The roofs also are made so they extend close to the earth, thus almost entirely protecting the sides of the structure from the storms.  All cracks are carefully filled with pieces of wood wedged and driven in.  Even the door, consisting of two or three vertical planks set in grooved timbers, is laboriously wedged the same way.  The building is rodent proof, and, because of its wide, projecting roof and the fact that it sets off the earth, it is practically moisture proof.