reaper

A reaper at Woolbrook, New South Wales

Mechanical reaper

A reaper is a person or machine that reaps (cuts and gathers) crops when they are ripe.

Hand reaping

Hand reaping is done by various means, including plucking the ears of grain directly by hand, cutting the grain stalks with a sickle, cutting them with a scythe, or with a later type of scythe called a cradle. Reaping is usually distinguished from mowing, which uses similar implements, but is the traditional term for cutting grass for hay, rather than reaping crops.

The reaped grain stalks are gathered into sheaves (bunches), tied with string or with a twist of straw. Several sheaves (singular sheaf) are then leant against each other with the ears off the ground to dry out, forming a stook. After drying, the sheaves are gathered from the field and stacked, being placed with the ears inwards, then covered with thatch or a tarpaulin; this is called a stack or rick. In the British Isles a rick of sheaves is traditionally called a corn rick, to distinguish it from a hay rick ("corn" in British English means "grain", not "maize", which is not grown for grain there). Ricks are made in an area inaccessible to livestock, called a rick-yard or stack-yard. The corn-rick is later broken down and the sheaves threshed to separate the grain from the straw.

Collecting split grain from the field after reaping is called gleaning, and is traditionally done either by hand, or by penning animals such as chickens or pigs onto the field.

Hand reaping is now rarely done in industrialized countries, but is still the normal method where machines are unavailable or where access for them is limited (such as on narrow terraces).

Mechanical reaping

A mechanical reaper or reaping machine is a mechanical, semi-automated device that reaps.

The Romans invented a simple mechanical reaper that cut the ears without the straw and was pushed by oxen (Pliny the Elder Nat. His. 18,296). This device was forgotten in the Dark Ages, during which period reapers reverted to using scythes and sickles to gather crops.

A much more sophisticated mechanical reaper was invented in 1831 by Robert Hall McCormick in Walnut Grove, Virginia, and patented by his son Cyrus McCormick in 1834 as a horse-drawn farm implement to cut small grain crops.^[1] It developed into and was replaced by the reaper-binder, which reaped the crop and bound it into sheaves. This was in turn replaced by the swather and eventually the combine harvester, which reaps and threshes in one operation.

See also

• Harvesting
• Combine harvester
• Museum of Scottish Country Life
• Death (personification) (the "Grim Reaper")
• Grim Reaper (disambiguation)

References

External links

• U.S. Patent X8,277 Reaper: C. H. McCormick
• Gallo-Roman reaper

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