The chief crop grown there is maize, and many different things are sown with it, such as dwarf kidney-beans and gourds. Young cabbages are also planted among the maize, and in the winter, after the grain has been garnered, they grow to a great height, when their leaves are plucked off one by one, the top being left to grow taller still. June and July are very busy months. Besides the wheat and rye harvests, the maize, which is not cut until September or October, gives endless work. First it has to be hoed, and then earthed up. Later on it is gradually thinned out, some of it being taken as fodder for the cattle, and all the time it has to be carefully and regularly watered. This is generally done by irrigation. A farmer’s whole prosperity depends on his water-supply, and no trouble is too great to insure a good one. Sometimes it is brought for miles in underground channels, or along a groove cut in the top of a broad wall. Another method is to raise it from a well by means of an old-fashioned water-wheel, worked by oxen. Many buckets are set about a foot apart on an endless chain, which passes over the wheel. With each turn these buckets dip into the well, and as they come up again empty the water into little channels, which carry it in all directions to irrigate the growing crops. As the maize ripens to harvest the golden cobs have to be cut from the straw, husked, dried, and finally threshed. The husking or removing of the outer sheath is a tedious business, so the farmers often give a kind of harvest home, to which they invite the neighbouring peasants. They provide food and wine in plenty, and their guests work far into the night, to the accompanying music of guitars and violins. There are many different kinds of beans grown--black, white, grey, and yellow, mottled beans and striped beans, large and small. Flax, too, is widely cultivated, and in the north the farmers’ wives and daughters spend the long winter evenings spinning and weaving it into linen for their clothes. In the marshy land near the sea we find rice, and most of the onions that are sold in England as Spanish onions in reality come from the North of Portugal.