Robinson Crusoe Told to the Children

Now about this time, when Robinson had been some months on the island, heavy and constant rain began to fall, and sometimes weeks would pass without a single dry day. He found that instead of there being Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, as in England, the seasons in his island were divided into the wet and the dry. There was no cold weather, no winter. It chanced that just before this first rain began, Robinson had emptied out some refuse from bags which had once held rice, and other grain, and he had forgotten all about having emptied them. So he was very much astonished to find, some time afterwards, both barley and rice growing near his tent, in the shade of the rock. The ears, when ripe, he kept to sow again, and from this very small beginning, in the course of a few seasons, he had a great quantity of grain, both for food and for sowing.

But this meant every year much hard work, for he had no plough nor harrow, and all the ground had to be dug with a clumsy spade, made from a very hard, heavy wood that grew on the island.