Church 97

New American Standard Bible "When you enter your neighbor's standing grain, then you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor's standing grain.

The reaping

In June the wheat reaping started. It was a circumstance of strong aggregation between the farmers which exchanged the "aid" to have the feeling to work more and to get less tired.

At dawn they already where in the fields and, after having tied the animals with long ropes to a tree to allow the pasture, they sharpened the sickles with the whetstone which was always kept dry in a horn filled with water hanging from the belt.

Then they put the rudimentary fingers-saving tools that each of them built by himself, suitably cutting out pieces of reed of the same diameter of the fingers.

They crossed themselves on the forehead and after uttering with loud voice "name of God", as the ancient crusaders did at the beginning of the battle, they bended their back expressing their good wishes about the goodness of the crop and started the cutting of the wheat, which was first placed on the ground, then tied in sheafs and finally, in the evening, piled in stacks.

For the reaping was used the sickle. The wheat, cut at the height of 15-20 cm and gathered in lumps, was put together in sheafs tied with a handful of the same wheat.

The threshing was made in the farmyard. The animals turned on the sheafs of corn to break the spikes and to let the wheat come out of them.

Many farmers did this operation by the flail (tool made by two wood sticks united by a rope used to beat the wheat). The stages of the separation of the straw from the wheat, the winnowing and the sieving followed. Before the coming of the combine harvester, the reaping always was a collettive celebration. The small grindstones were used to grind the wheat at home, when it was impossible to go to the mill.

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