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Texto reemplazado: «<sup>th</sup> century» por «th century»
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Farming equipment did not undergo any important changes until the early part of the 20<sup>th</sup> 20th century. Spades, ploughs, rakes, sickles, scythes and threshers were the essential implements for farm work.
The modernising process was slow until the mid-20<sup>th</sup> 20th century. Farming began to be mechanised to a greater extent on the Mediterranean side of the watershed in the Basque Country. Even so, it could be seen in some towns that using spades continued to be more practical than the plough in small or steep plots of land, because the plough would easily slip (Obanos-N). On the other hand, this process was hindered on the Atlantic side as the narrow valleys and steep land mean that it was not profitable and in some cases impossible to introduce more sophisticated ploughs or machines.
The gradual mechanisation, from the last quarter of the 20<sup>th</sup> 20th century, was a step forward in the modernising of the agricultural equipment and to adapt and update the farming industry. Due to this process, today’s farmers are forced to constantly improve their machinery and get rid of the traditional implements used by their father and grandfathers. Those implements, in the best of cases, end up decorating the walls of the house and its front garden or in an ethnographic museum.
The farming equipment, covered by our surveys, is prior to the mechanisation of farming, to a great extent. Some of those traditional tools still continue to be used and come in many types and forms overall. Many of them were produced by local farriers and carpenters. As regards the names, it should be noted that they are frequently local ones and can even vary from one neighbourhood to another within the same village.
There is a variety of sizes and shapes, but there are two fundamental types: the so-called ''Gipuzkoa spade'', with very long iron blades and short wooden shafts, and the ''Navarra spade''', '''''with a wider cutting edge and shorter blade (around 35 cm) and long wooden shaft. There was a type between the two as can been seen in the pictures of St. Isidore the Labourer from the 18th century<ref>José Mª JIMENO JURÍO. "Diccionario etnográfico y Folklórico" in ''Etnografía histórica al airico de la tierra''. Pamplona: 2010, p. 376.</ref>.
Barandiaran notes that the opinion of Th. Lefebvre<ref>Th. LEFÈBVRE. ''Les modes de vie dans les Pyrénées Atlantiques Orientales''. Paris: 1933, pp. 208-210.</ref>, who argues that the claim that use of the spade in the Basque Country dates back to the 16<sup>th</sup> 16th century, when corn began to be grown, lacks merit. He believes it to be implausible that the introduction of this new cereal from The Americas would end the use of the plough to work the land to grow wheat and other cereals. The farm labourer, accustomed to work his land with the old ''goldea ''(plough'') ''pulled by cows or oxen, would be unlikely to turn their back on this method to perform the hardest farm work with their own brute force. Furthermore, ethnologists in general believe that the spade was prior to the plough or ''goldea'' in the Basque Country.
=== The hoe, Aitzurra, and its types ===
