16 English

Country and work  Henrique has a lot of friends. Since he started to study in the university, he has gotten along well with Carlos, a friend from Ourense, a son of farm workers.  At the end of the course, Carlos goes to  his village.  He is an essential help at home in this time when there are so many tasks to do.  His father and younger brother are not able to do everything.

In June, just on arriving, his father has the scythes sharpened and the three men go to Perulleira's meadow to cut the grass.  In the Veiga meadow, they  use the mowing machine, but the former, since it is so steep, they have to cut it by hand.  Carlos is tired of telling his father that the land where machines cannot enter, should be left fallow.  His father is not convinced.  He always says that because of more hay, it can not be a worse year.

At about noon, having cut the whole meadow, which isn't big, they pick up each of their rakes and spread out the hay well so that the sun can reach it.  The  next day they will turn it over and on the third day they will collect all of it.  This year they filled five wagons, the dry spell was long; but I remember up to seven or eight wagon loads when there was enough water.  Upon the arrival of dusk, they yoked the cows and hooked them to the wagon.  Carlos was calling a pair, even though he cold hardly manage the driving stick, he had so many bruises. The proverb tells the truth : "When someone is not used to pants, the hem wounds him".

A few days later, the reaping starts.  Now it doesn't create fear because so little is sowed, but before,  the thing was not enviable because  fields  of thirty or forty ferrados used to be dug into the mountain.  In  Carlos' land, which is in the river plain, the wheat and the barley rapidly mature. At Saint Peter's fair, they buy the  small sickles, because just at the beginning of July the first straw is cut.  Carlos' brother says that this doesn't suit him and that already he is tired of mowing, turning over piles, tying up bundles and  stacking them, and on top of it all having to beat the grain out, which is what angers him the most.  "If they don't buy a tractor, he says,  I'm going to Germany".  Carlos' father and mother, while they don't see the grain in the store house, they don't sleep well.  They say that it isn't free from a hail storm that smashes the straw into the fields.

After the grain beating, Carlos doesn't pick up another tool in his hand. Since the subject of Pathology remains for him to pass, he dedicates himself to studying, because there is little time left before the examinations.  In the meantime, his father and brother take the manure in order to sow the turnips, taking advantage of a storm which came and the earth now has some moisture.  They  fertilize the land well so that the turnip greens come up strong. Carlos' grandfather's proverb is a law "if you want to harvest , you should not shirk  in fertilizing and in hoeing".  In January and later, they begin to sprout and show leaves.  As spring begins, they flower.  Each plant gives at least one hundred yellow flowers.

In order to finish off summer, the potatoes have to be harvested.  These year there are many of them.  They thank the weeding they gave them in the spring.

"My little pigs and calves will be so happy!"- Carlos' mother was saying when she saw the storage bins so full.

"Well, we will see where we put the corn, his father was saying, because the magpies in the field are already eating it, and here I am without having tasted the corn bread and I don't want to pass up the papas(sweet, corn puree)".

On the twelfth of October, Carlos had to leave again for Santiago.  He went away thinking how happy his family was with so much abundance.  As the car went up and down the  hills on the shore of the Miño River, he was looking at the vineyards and how  the vines were full with  mature grapes.   Then he remembered the song which he had learned when he was little and he softly sang:

"Harvest, harvesters
in my father's grape harvest;
the wine goes into the pumpkin
and the bread into the basket goes."