Cereal production

"Every year, in my village, an extraordinary event took place — one of immense human, moral, and social value. Returning from the scorching Plain of Foggia, in the Tavoliere of Apulia, where the harvest had already taken place, the seasonal reapers arrived on foot, even from the most distant villages. The most resolute and tenacious were our neighbors from Trevico and the "Marinese", so called because they came from faraway towns overlooking the sea of Brindisi. Wrapped in their doughnut-shaped bundle over their shoulders, they carried with them only a blanket, a poor change of linen, small food reserves, finger guards, and the sickle with its silvery blade, proudly displayed on their shoulder, hanging from a cord around the neck. For those fifteen or twenty days of such heavy labor, many among these humble, honest people sometimes did not have a single truly hot meal: bread and cheese, or, if hired, homemade pasta or potatoes or codfish, celery, and onions cooked the evening before and kept in a "spasa" (tray) warmed by the sun as a "food warmer". [...] But the true celebration was the "pesatura" — the threshing. The "pignone" — the pile of sheaves being worked in turn — was taken apart; the bundles were untied, one by one, and spread out over the entire surface of the threshing floor; their stalks always turned outward, following the circular edge of the floor, while the ears of grain, neatly arranged, crowded the inner space, smiling, as if ready to offer their kernels for the making of bread. Meanwhile, on each side of the yoke fastened to the mule's (or sometimes one or two donkeys') flanks, two chains were hooked in a Y-shape, their ends inserted into the hole at one corner of a heavy triangular stone. The animal, trotting lightly in countless circles and dragging the heavy stone behind it, had to pass over the ears of wheat again and again until they, trampled by its hooves and shaken by that stone ('lu tufo'), released all their grains — this was the "pesatura", the threshing! And I can assure you, that day was surely the one most filled with euphoria and joy, the moment awaited with relief and liberation after months of work — and, above all, of anxiety. I know it well, for I myself took part in it for many years — as both participant and witness.".