After the season the vines should be pruned and the vineyards plowed and dug over, once in early and once in late winter.[150] ----- ----- In vineyards and fig-orchards one will notice the stone huts called _ḳaṣr_,[151] plural _ḳuṣûr_. Between seasons, when they are not in use, they swarm with hungry fleas. Near each of them is a tiny sunken pit, walled on three sides, which makes a little fireplace. A similar pocket makes a hiding-place for dry figs which are left here under slight pressure beneath a flat stone. The latter place is made to look like the ground about by covering with small stones so as to mislead thieves. Such a hiding-place is called a _mikhba_. Most of the fig crop is dried for later use. The smaller varieties are most suitable for this purpose. The fruit is picked into small baskets and spread out on the ground. Sometimes the fruit is crushed by the hand to hasten the drying. ----- ----- The olive crop is ready late in the autumn. The trees are beaten[152] with long poles by the men, while women and children gather up the berries from the ground. Seldom is care exercised to select and sort the best of the berries. They are piled in heaps inside the house, where they often become heated through, thus producing an inferior quality of oil. The berries are first put into a circular stone bed, where they are crushed, seed and all, by a sort of millstone set on edge and run like a wheel around a central pivot by a shaft. The crushed mass is then put into gunny sacking or coarse baskets and carried to the press. The oil-presses have always been very primitive, bungling affairs, but of late iron screws are being introduced. ----- -----