But for the last couple of weeks as Ive been riding through the South Eastern areas of the South American continent, its been pretty much exclusively either Jungle, or more often, pastoral country... And its harvest season.
And now as I ride along through the higher ground of Bolivia and Peru, Im again in the midst of the harvest.
Everywhere I look, there are little patches of crops that are either already fully ripe in golds and yellows and even rust reds, or in some cases the crop is still green but starting to turn yellow. And likewise, everywhere I look, the local farming folk are gathering in the seasons harvest...
But they are not doing it the way Ive seen it done for decades in the countries where Im from... With large automated machines that bring in tonnes of grain every hour... No, they are doing it the way it has been done for centuries... If not millennia.... By Hand!
In ones and twos I see them out in there small crop lots of maybe 50m square. They are out there harvesting before Im on the bike in the mornings at 7am, and they are still out there after Ive finished riding, and only head for their homes at about 7pm when the sun has set and the cold of the Altiplano night has started to bite again.
And even though Ive never seen these harvest methods in my life, they are still quite familiar to me... They use little hand sickles and and they cut the grain stalks right at the base. Then when they have a good double sized arm-full of grain stalks, they take a small hand-full of them and use them to tie a cinch around the bundle of grain... and voile! They have a stook... Thats a word I have never had cause to use before because Ive never seen a stook of grain in my life till now... But I know the word... From way back as a kid... I think from very old kids stories!
But, here in the high country of Bolivia and Peru, there are stooks everywhere :)
And there are fields of all sorts of grains...I recognise the wheat and the oats and barley, but there are also others less familiar like quinoa. Regardless of what type, they are all being harvested as I ride along. The stooks are standing neatly in the fields and I assume they will stay there till the whole field has been cut and then they will get moved to the houses where they will be hand threshed.
Ive only seen a couple of people ding this so far, but its the next stage where a bundle of the sun-dried grain stalks is picked up and swung down against a largish solid object (a rock or a log or some such) with the grain head outer-most. It knocks the grain out of the heads and onto the ground. Then the grain is collected off the ground (or mats) and the last stage is to get rid of the husks by winnowing... Another word Ive never had cause to use, but its the right word Im sure... I have no idea how I know this or even if all of it is right... Again, its in my head from long long ago... Maybe its in every ones heads from long long ago...Like a race memory ??
And, while I said that farming country holds little attraction for me; I must admit though that seeing the little mud houses nestled in amongst these golden fields of ripe grain with the heads all nodding in the wind and the harvest going on... I do feel the "connection"... There is something deeply satisfying seeing these crops so heavy with seed and ripe and being brought in at the seasons end... Its from down deep... generations old... but its there, familiar and comfortable and it brings a smile to my face as I ride along...
... The old ways; The true ways :)))
And there are a few other things that catch my eye and attract my camera lens, but its the harvest that occupies most of every ones attention for the time being :)
A few other pictures attached ...
