Juan Manuel Castro Prieto can still recall — even a half-century later — everything his grandfather Pablo taught him about the mysteries of wheat.

In those days, Cespedosa de Tormes, the village in western Spain where his parents hailed from, still farmed the age-old ways, requiring the rigor and stamina of an Olympic sport. The crops were sowed by hand, the harvest cut with a sickle and the wheat separated from the chaff — the grain from the straw — with the help of a cool wind that arrived, when it arrived, just before dawn. Juan Manuel would join grandfather Pablo, camping out under the stars to await the magic breeze. When it came, it kicked up the light straw, leaving the heavier part of the wheat, the grain, for them to scoop up from the ground.

The wheat harvest was just one aspect of life in Cespedosa that captured the young man’s imagination and inspired him to want to become a photographer to savor it forever.