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A reaper is a person or machine that reaps (cuts and gathers) crops
Crop (agriculture)

A crop is the annual or season's yield of any plant that is grown in significant quantities to be harvested as food, as livestock fodder, or for any other economic purpose....
 when they are ripe.

reaping is done by various means, including plucking the ears of grain directly by hand, cutting the grain stalks with a sickle
Sickle

A sickle is a hand-held agricultural tool with a curved blade typically used for harvesting cereal crop or cutting grass for hay. The inside of the curve is sharp, so that the user can draw or swing the blade against the base of the crop, catching it in the curve and slicing it at the same time....
, cutting them with a scythe
Scythe

A scythe is an agriculture hand tool for mowing grass or reaping agriculture. It was largely replaced by horse-drawn and then tractor machinery, but is still used in some areas of Europe and Asia....
, or with a later type of scythe called a cradle
Cradle (grain)

A cradle is an agricultural tool, a form of the scythe, used to reap grain. It is a scythe with an arrangement of fingers attached to the snath, snathe or snaith , such that the cut grain falls upon the fingers and can be cleanly laid down in a row for collection....
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Agriculture 2
A reaper is a person or machine that reaps (cuts and gathers) crops
Crop (agriculture)

A crop is the annual or season's yield of any plant that is grown in significant quantities to be harvested as food, as livestock fodder, or for any other economic purpose....
 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
Sickle

A sickle is a hand-held agricultural tool with a curved blade typically used for harvesting cereal crop or cutting grass for hay. The inside of the curve is sharp, so that the user can draw or swing the blade against the base of the crop, catching it in the curve and slicing it at the same time....
, cutting them with a scythe
Scythe

A scythe is an agriculture hand tool for mowing grass or reaping agriculture. It was largely replaced by horse-drawn and then tractor machinery, but is still used in some areas of Europe and Asia....
, or with a later type of scythe called a cradle
Cradle (grain)

A cradle is an agricultural tool, a form of the scythe, used to reap grain. It is a scythe with an arrangement of fingers attached to the snath, snathe or snaith , such that the cut grain falls upon the fingers and can be cleanly laid down in a row for collection....
. Reaping is usually distinguished from mowing
Mower

A mower is a machine for cutting crops or plants that grow on the ground. A smaller mower used for lawns and sports grounds is called a lawn mower or grounds mower, which is often self-powered, or may also be small enough to be pushed by the operator....
, 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
Straw

Straw is an agricultural by-product, the dry wikt:stalk of a cereal plant, after the grain or seed has been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat....
. 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
Tarpaulin

A tarpaulin or tarp is a large sheet of strong, flexible, water resistant or waterproof material, often cloth such as canvas or polyester coated with plastics such as latex or PVC....
; this is called a stack or rick. In the British Isles
British Isles

The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include Great Britain and Ireland, and numerous smaller islands....
 a rick of sheaves is traditionally called a corn rick, to distinguish it from a hay rick ("corn" in British English
British English

British English or UK English is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere....
 means "grain
GRAIN

GRAIN is an international non-governmental organization based in Barcelona, Spain, which works toward sustainable agriculture. It was formed upon the realization that the genetic diversity of the world's food crops are being drastically eliminated....
", not "maize
Maize

Maize , known as corn in some countries, is a cereal domesticated in Mesoamerica and subsequently spread throughout the American continents....
", 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
Threshing

Threshing is the process of loosening the edible part of cereal grain from the scaly, inedible chaff that surrounds it. It is the step in grain preparation before winnowing, which separates the loosened chaff from the grain....
 to separate the grain from the straw.

Collecting spilt grain from the field after reaping is called gleaning
Gleaning

Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest....
, and is traditionally done either by hand, or by penning animals such as chicken
Chicken

The chicken is a Domestication fowl. Recent evidence suggests that domestication of the chicken was under way in Vietnam over 10,000 years ago....
s or pig
Pig

Pigs, also called hogs or swine, are a genus of even-toed ungulates within the Family Suidae. The name pig, hog, or swine most commonly refers to the Domestic pig in everyday parlance, but technically encompasses several distinct species, including the Wild Boar....
s onto the field.

Hand reaping is now rarely done in industrialised 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, a machine
Machine

A machine is any device that uses energy to perform some activity. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work....
 that reaps.

The Romans
Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
 invented a simple mechanical reaper that cut the ears
Ear (botany)

An ear is the top part of a grain plant, such as wheat or maize. The ear contains the seeds.In some species, such as wheat, ears contribute significantly to photosynthesis....
 without the straw
Straw

Straw is an agricultural by-product, the dry wikt:stalk of a cereal plant, after the grain or seed has been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat....
 and was pushed by oxen (Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an ancient author, naturalist or natural philosopher and naval and military commander of some importance who wrote Natural History ....
 Nat. His. 18,296). This device was forgotten in the Dark Ages
Dark Ages

Dark Age or Dark Ages is a term in historiography referring to a period of cultural decline or societal collapse that took place in Western Europe between the Decline of the Roman Empire and the eventual recovery of learning....
, during which period reapers reverted to using scythe
Scythe

A scythe is an agriculture hand tool for mowing grass or reaping agriculture. It was largely replaced by horse-drawn and then tractor machinery, but is still used in some areas of Europe and Asia....
s and sickles to gather crops.

A much more sophisticated mechanical reaper was invented in 1831 in Union Bridge, Maryland, and patented by Cyrus McCormick
Cyrus McCormick

Cyrus Hall McCormick, Sr. of Rockbridge County, Virginia was an United States inventor and founder of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, which became part of International Harvester in 1902....
 in 1834 as a horse
Horse

The horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolution of the horse over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, odd-toed ungulate animal of today....
-drawn farm implement to cut small grain
Cereal

Cereals, or cereal grains, are mostly Poaceae cultivated for their edible brans or fruit seeds . Cereal grains are grown in greater quantities and provide more energy worldwide than any other type of crop; they are therefore staple foods....
 crops. It developed into and was replaced by the reaper-binder
Binder

The reaper-binder, or binder, was a farm implement that improved upon the reaper. The binder was invented in 1872 by Charles Withington....
, which reaped the crop and bound it into sheaves. This was in turn replaced by the swather
Swather

A swather is a farm implement that cuts hay or small Cereal Crop s and forms them into a windrow.A swather may be self propelled via an internal combustion engine, or may be drawn by a tractor and powered through a power take-off shaft....
 and eventually the combine harvester
Combine harvester

The combine harvester, or simply combine, also known as a thresher is a machine that combines the tasks of harvesting, threshing, and cleaning cereal crops....
, which reapers and threshes in one operation.

See also

  • Harvesting
  • Combine harvester
    Combine harvester

    The combine harvester, or simply combine, also known as a thresher is a machine that combines the tasks of harvesting, threshing, and cleaning cereal crops....
  • Museum of Scottish Country Life
  • Death (personification)
    Death (personification)

    Death as a sentient entity is a concept that has existed in many societies since the beginning of history. In English, death is often given the name the "Grim Reaper" and from the 15th century onwards came to be shown as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe and clothed in a black cloak with a hood....
     (the "Grim Reaper")
  • Grim Reaper (disambiguation)
    Grim Reaper (disambiguation)

    The Grim Reaper is a Death .Grim Reaper can also refer to:* Grim Reaper , a British heavy metal band.* Grim Reaper , a Marvel Comics supervillain and brother of Wonder Man....


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