The harvest

It is one of the important practices related to nature and lifestyle of Arabs nowadays and in the past. People normally reap wheat, chickpeas, barley and lentils with hands if they are short and with a sickle if the reeds are big. A sickle, bagging hook, reaping-hook or grass hook is a single-handed agricultural tool designed with variously curved blades and typically used for harvesting, or reaping, grain crops or cutting succulent forage chiefly for feeding livestock, either freshly cut or dried as hay. Some people hang it today on the walls of their rooms as a symbol of heritage. There is also the Sha’ub. It is a pitchfork tool used in agriculture to spread straw on the soil. It separates the wheat grain from the spike. Some use an instrument known as Hashusheh to reap plants
The Harvest of Wheat: The season of the harvest starts yearly mainly in summer in June. The families and neighbors cooperate to reap the plants. After reaping plants, they are placed in bags called Shaleef made out of fiber and used to collect wheat, barley and other plants to be carried on animals.
The season of harvest is considered as one of the most beautiful times where hymns, songs called Mawaweel (a type of very popular singing) are originating from elderly women. People use big bags made of fiber to keep the crops and store them for winter. All the people of the village come together and start their work early in the morning directly after the dawn prayers during the cool weather. They start reaping by ripping the wheat and barley from the ground. Normally they start with barley because it needs shorter time than wheat to be riped, the ripped wheat and barley are gathered in small groups called Shmal. At the end of the day, they gather wheat in rectangular -shaped piles called Hilleh.