weather beaten faces

This year the farmers are celebrating
the greatest full moon harvest
they ever had in the past hundred years
with a special field they sowed
to be reaped before the arrival of winter,
in the meantime, off in the distance
the church bell rings by way of a clapper
who strikes the bell with a farmer's hammer
signaling to the villagers, it's time for work
they all line up in procession
with grit and determination
with weather beaten faces
turned into rawhide skin,   
with shovels over their shoulders
they march to the beets and to the yams
to the fields loaded with rich phosphorus deposits
that washes down from the hills into streams
that irrigate the crops into super giant
beets and yams, the size of watermelons  
just bulging out of the rich soil,
the farmers came to dig and dig.
They worked fast and furiously
to beat the first frost digging reaping
and piling up the yams and the beets
into several mountain peaks of yellows and purple