That generation would mention to me, time and again and with nostalgia, that the tendency to help one another had disappeared. Before, both work and rest were shared; now, each person goes their own way or shuts themselves away in their own home.

In the culture of the baserri (Basque farmhouse), community held great strength: it was the center of life, relationships, production, and the economy. Families became neighborhoods, and neighborhoods became villages. The territorial structure is largely the same today; society, however, is not. Back then, community was a way of living day to day; today, by contrast, we want to belong to a community, but only at the level of feeling.

The first research work of the Garile project revealed that this gap also affected the collective memory surrounding wheat. I began gathering testimony from several people from Errigoiti who were born between 1930 and 1955 to talk about wheat and the way of life connected to it. In those long conversations, one thing stood out clearly: wheat was not just another task of farmhouse life, it was also the social, economic, and emotional center of the community.

Until the mid-20th century, wheat was the activity that best explained communal life in the baserris of Biscay. It was not just a plant; it was an entire social system. Work, the rhythm of the year, and relationships between families and neighbors were largely organized around wheat. Sowing, weeding, cutting, or threshing were not isolated tasks: they were carried out collectively, sustained by the logic of communal labor and the need for mutual support, which was also deeply cultural in that way of life.

The testimonies gathered in Errigoiti confirm this reality: families extended into neighborhoods, and these became networks of teamwork. Threshing was one of the clearest expressions of this communal culture. Until the 1950s it was done by hand, beating the bundles against stone slabs, and later with the first small machines known as machacadoras, bought jointly by several baserris “in partnership.” The machine would move from house to house, and although the work was hard, food, drink, songs, and a festive atmosphere softened the labor.

The landscape itself reflected this shared way of life. It was a fabric that connected neighborhoods and farmhouses: a succession of cultivated fields, a beautiful mosaic built from different colors and shades. Each family worked its own land, but everyone contributed to something shared. Although the changing colors of the landscape were constant, from late spring onward the meadows began to change color at the same time; in June, ripened wheat stretched across Bizkaigane, Madalen, or Sallobante in a coherent way, as if they were a single territory. This visual synchrony showed the strength of a community that shared techniques, tools, calendars, and effort. Wheat made the collective visible: it turned the territory into a work created by everyone.

WHEAT, MUCH MORE THAN FOOD

Beyond being part of our diet for many years, wheat organized a way of being in connection with others. The disappearance of its cultivation was part of the loss of a social structure that kept neighbors, families, and generations together, along with the loss of the baserri itself. Understanding this communal dimension is essential to affirm that recovering wheat today is far more than simply recovering a cereal.

The link between community and wheat is easy to understand, but what do farms and wheat have to do with science?

Before writing this article, I looked up the definition of science. What I found was not what I expected, but it read as follows: “Systematic knowledge acquired through observation and reasoning; which deduces general principles and laws, has predictive capacity, and can be verified through experiments.”

Literally, it seems to follow the rural logic. Observation is constant: how plants grow, what diseases appear, which soils perform better… From there, reasoning is applied, knowing which varieties adapt better and which do not. It is systematic because it is repeated every year, incorporating what has been learned. Its great predictive capacity is the result of years of accumulated wisdom. Experimentation was necessary in order to draw concrete conclusions.

This has distorted my image of the scientist: our rural areas have been full of scientists—just without white lab coats or microscopes.

Rural knowledge is science. Knowledge of wheat is also science. And much of that knowledge has been lost, while the rest is on the brink of disappearing. I do not want to make tragic predictions, but it is undeniable that fewer and fewer people live in farms creating a major gap in knowledge transmission. Losing the intense research carried out by previous generations will force future ones to start again from scratch, which (also from a community perspective) is a great loss.

I have been curious for a long time: what happened to wheat in our territory? I have heard many stories saying that a lot of wheat was once grown here, and there is even a photograph from 1936, from the Bizkaigane neighborhood of Errigoiti, showing a family harvesting wheat and making choles (bundles). But I know nothing about this myself. It amazes me how it has not even been passed down as a generational story. It has been spoken about so little that we have come to believe wheat is a Mediterranean crop that was barely produced in our territory. I would say there has been an abyss in transmission.

Today, very few people have lived alongside wheat. In these areas, it stopped being cultivated around 1960, and now is the moment to build the bridge that will connect the two sides of the cliff, before the distance becomes too great.

GARILE: RECOVERING THE HISTORY OF WHEAT AND A VILLAGE

That is where Garile began its journey: talking with people from the baserris of Errigoiti, recording their voices and transcribing them. Seeking to retrace the old wheat path of the old farmhouses: from the land to the threshold, from the threshold to the chest, and from the chest to the oven. It has become clear that this world that once existed still leaves its traces, and that the culture of wheat can be reconstructed by pulling on these threads in our village.

Garile has taken its first steps in both directions: recovering traditional varieties and once again making wheat part of diversified agriculture. Alongside this, the village of Errigoiti—at least in part—regains some of its food sovereignty.

But for all this to acquire full meaning, social work is essential. That is why Garile places emphasis on environmental education and works on the need for collectivity both in schools and in local activities, because neither memory nor wheat will be recovered individually.

Recovering wheat should not be done from nostalgia. Looking back is a task that must be adapted to the present, and in which popular science has its place: we will do science by observing the land, reflecting on acquired knowledge, and sharing it with the community. Just as farmers once did, today we too must observe, test, and learn together. A dozen choles form small mounds, and many small mounds form a larger one.

Following this logic, Garile moves along its path without grand destinations, advancing slowly, reflecting and making decisions at each crossroads. Valuing what comes and fighting for what we want to come. Perhaps the key lies in the project’s breadth: in the path that knowledge, crops, and communities will walk together, bound to the territory.

With the hope of meeting you along the way, it has been a pleasure to have this space for reflection and the opportunity to write this article. I invite you to come and help harvest the wheat in the sown fields.

A good wheat harvest to you, Euskal Herria!