In San Miguel antique shops you sometimes see weathered oxen yokes. You take one home and place it artfully beside that old wagon wheel leaning on your faux hacienda gate.

When I saw these yokes in a small town mercado, I figured the supply of antique yokes had given out, and a woodworker was making new ones for the tourist trade.

Then I saw this plow, and I began to realize that these were not yard decorations; they were tools, tools that someone would actually use.

It isn't pretty, this plow. But it looks functional and sturdy. That draw bar is a scraped small tree trunk and is attached to the foot with a wedged short plank. A handle reaches up for the farmer's guiding hand. A pointed plate of 1/4" mild steel (not visible in the photo) is bolted to the foot for durability and sharpness.

We saw one of these in action, cultivating a cornfield. The farmer has reached the end of a row, and placing his left arm under the control handle, lifts the plowshare out of the soil.

You can see that this plow will not turn the earth like the common American moldboard plow. It's capable only of scraping a furrow. Since there's no need to cut sod, that's probably enough for this farmer's needs.

Here we see it all put together. A pair of oxen, bearing one of those wonderful wooden yokes, draws the plow down a row of corn plants. When one of the oxen pauses, the farmer pokes it with his pole.

Apparently, left to their own devices, oxen will eat young corn plants. Why not? That's what they're fed back in the stable—last year's cornstalks. Your local mercado offers a solution to this problem as well.

Ox muzzles. Here, a properly attired ox models one. (Also note the leather straps holding the yoke to his forehead and horns.)

This is not Zapotec or Mixtec technology. Oxen and the plows they draw were brought to the New World by the Spaniards. Prior to their arrival, Indians planted corn by poking a hole in the ground with a pointed stick.

But plowing with a team of oxen is very old, very primitive. That plow, yoke and team of oxen are probably this farmer's largest investment. It's all he can afford in this state of Oaxaca, one of the poorest in Mexico.