ABSTRACT
For about twenty years now it has become fashionable in many parts of France, as in many other so-called developed countries, to organize rural festivals where bygone works and crafts are demonstrated before a public of mostly city-dwellers. There are a number of possible explanations. Millet was grown in comparatively small quantities and was preferred by the poor because its cultivation required more manpower and less capital than bread cereals. The size of the plant and of the seeds make elaborated techniques of sowing and tillage both impracticable and unprofitable. There are, in fact, a number of simple and efficient techniques requiring no sickle, indeed no cutting implement at all, for harvesting grains but grains only, not the straw, and this is probably the nub. There are in the world a number of cases where horses, donkeys, mules or camels were used to draw ards and carts instead of oxen.
