Straw lofts / water mills

It is well – known among the peasants the idea of taking advantage of any king of activity, therefore the popular saying that says, “From the pig everything is useful”. This fact can be taken to the rest of the activities and considering as an example the crop of cereals. Once the threshing is made and the grains taken away, the straw, that is to say, the stems of cereals, was employed besides the food for the livestock, for its use in the roofs of the straw lofts. The most frequent type to do that was the rye straw because of its great resistance. These types of constructions had got a number of utilities, which were the dwellings of the majority of the inhabitants from the midlands, besides those constructions were used as implement rooms or to keep the potato and fruits seeds; in other times they were employed as kitchens. These buildings were raised over dry stone walls with a framework of holly tree, pine tree woods, and other types, some simple constructions but at the same time very resistant and insulating despite the inclemency of the weather. Nowadays, we still can distinguish them in the setting of the midland area of the municipality, especially in the area of La Cruz del Castaño.

Other things related to the cereal crops and their by – products, are the water mills. These are mainly placed in the low lands of the town, with a lot of hydraulic resources and a pronounced slope to make fast and improve the force of water dragging in the sails of the mills. The roasted maize meal had a great importance in the way of feeding up The Realejero people, in those years food was a poor resource. In the Country Estate of Los Príncipes there is a mill which is expected to be restored. Due to what has been said, a notable section of the most plentiful flows are set in the very sides of the sea, where the Hamilton House in 1903 installed a device based on the use steam, capable of raising water from the area of Gordejuela till the irrigated lands situated in highest places. At present, we can observe the remains of the setting where the steam machine was situated, the first one in Tenerife for that type of activity. Apart from that, there are still small buildings supporting the hydraulic exploitation.