Basque ethnography at a glance

Harvesting wheat in Zeanuri (Bizkaia), 1920. Source: Felipe Manterola Collection.

Before the mechanization of the field, manual harvesting consisted of holding the grain that the sickle was harvesting with one hand and placing the cut grain on the ground, so that that hand was free to continue repeating the operation. Another person, usually a woman, was in charge of collecting these sheaves and, using the cereal stalks as ropes, she tied them together to form bundles that would facilitate the movement of the grain from the field to the barn.

Although each person was very careful in their task, it was inevitable that the grain heads would remain in the sheaves. Gleaning, literally, was the collection of berries that remained in the room, so that they would not be wasted. However, the same concept could be extended to other similar tasks that are carried out after the harvest to optimize their use. Thus we find practices such as picking unpicked grapes in vineyards (in Spanish racimar), looking for unpicked olives under olive trees or on the tree itself (in Spanish rebuscar), or going to certain trees (chestnuts, walnuts, almonds) to look for fruits that had survived the harvest.

The fundamental element to consider in these practices is the socially accepted nature within a logic of exploitation. In a society where common resources were managed to ensure their benefit through a system of rights and obligations acquired by being neighbors, how did the municipal ordinances of the past foresee and allow private resources to be used even by those who were not their legal owners, provided that they were carried out under certain conditions, so as not to cause harm. Thus we find regulations on the time periods for harvesting before allowing animals and herds to enter farms, another widespread custom that benefited both those who owned or cared for the animals and the owners of the land.

The residual nature of the task of harvesting required time, effort and patience to obtain a result that we could consider ridiculous compared to the quantities obtained in the harvest. Even in the broader sense of the concept of gathering, it was possible to gather those specific parts of the piece that had not been gathered (for example, due to difficult terrain or access), gathering, collecting or searching were survival activities, precisely those carried out by the most disadvantaged sectors of the economy, characterized by a subsistence nature. Thus, in the structural context of this traditional agricultural society, among those who dedicated themselves to gathering what would otherwise be outside human use, we find two main profiles: women (“gatherers”, “searchers”) and children.

Nowadays, the mechanization of agricultural tasks and social dynamics themselves have distanced the notion of gleaning from everyday life. In fact, our current mentality seems to be increasingly distancing us from the idea of ​​taking advantage of the opportunities we have: we tend to consume new and perfect products in a continuous and increasingly expensive way while rejecting others that are in our possession. From the perspective of our first globalized world, it seems that we prefer waste (fruit, food or any object) to its benefit, perhaps this attitude on our part will be misinterpreted as a sign of decadence and even misery.

Beatriz Gallego — Labrit Heritage