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Updated: June 5, 2025
In the season of 1903, the first rains came April 5, and the first mountain sementera was scratched over for millet April 10, after five successive daily rains. Fertilizing Much care is taken in fertilizing the irrigated sementeras. Into this inclosure dry grasses and dead vines are continually placed to absorb and become rotted by the liquids.
An irrigated sementera 60 by 100 feet, having 6,000 square feet of surface, is valued at two carabaos, or, in money, about 100 pesos. It produces an average annual crop of ten cargoes of palay, each worth 1 peso. Thus there is an annual gross profit of ten per cent on the value of the permanent investment. It requires ten men one day to turn the soil and fertilize the plat.
Though ceremonials having to do with agriculture have purposely been omitted from this chapter, yet, since one of the most striking and important features of the harvesting is the harvest ceremonial, it is thought best to introduce it here. Sa-fo'-sab is the name of the ceremony. It is performed in a pathway adjoining each sementera before a single grain is gathered.
The Igorot employ three methods of irrigation: One, the simplest and most natural, is to build sementeras along a small stream which is turned into the upper sementera and passes from one to another, falling from terrace to terrace until all water is absorbed, evaporated, or all available or desired land is irrigated.
Willing bands swarmed about the coffin. At all times as many men helped bear it as could well get hold, and when they mounted the face of a 7-foot sementera wall a dozen strong pairs of hands found service drawing up and supporting the burden.
Beans and rice, each cooked separately, are frequently eaten together; such a dish is called "sib-fan'." Salt is eaten with sib-fan' by those pueblos which commonly consume salt. Maize is husked, silked, and then cooked on the cob. It is eaten from the cob, and no salt is used either in the cooking or eating. Camotes are eaten raw a great deal about the pueblo, the sementera, and the trail.
In all agricultural labors the Igorot is industrious, yet his humor, ever present with him, brings relief from continued toil. The harvest field is no exception, since there is much quiet gossip and jest during the labors. In 1903 rice was first harvested May 2. The harvest continued one month, the crop of a sementera being gathered here and there as it ripened.
As soon as all was arranged at the fire a small amount of basi was poured over a sprig of pa-lo'-ki which was stuck in the soil of the sementera, or one or two sprigs were inserted, drooping, in a split in a tall, green runo, and this was pushed into the soil. While the person stood beside the efficacious pa-lo'-ki an invocation was voiced to Lumawig to bless the crop.
More effort is needed to thrust the kay-kay deep enough into the dry soil, and it is thrust three or four times before the earth may be turned. Only one-half the surface of a sementera is turned for camotes. Raised beds are made about 2 feet wide and 8 to 12 inches high. The spaces between these beds become paths along which the cultivator and harvester walks.
The wage paid in palay is equivalent to 5 cents per laborer, or 50 cents. Five women can transplant the rice in one day; cost, 25 cents. Cultivating and protecting the crop falls to the members of the family which owns the sementera, so the Igorot say; he claims never to have to pay for such labor. Twenty people can harvest the crop in a day; cost, 1 peso.
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