Reaper

Common card · No. 273510

A reaper is a farm implement that reaps (cuts and often also gathers) crops at harvest when they are ripe. Usually the crop involved is a cereal grass, especially wheat. The first documented reaping machines were Gallic reapers that were used in Roman times in what would become modern-day France. The Gallic reaper involved a comb which collected the heads, with an operator knocking the grain into a box for later threshing. Most modern mechanical reapers cut grass; most also gather it, either by windrowing or picking it up. Modern machines that not only cut and gather the grass but also thresh its seeds (the grain), winnow the grain, and deliver it to a truck or wagon, are called combine harvesters or simply combines, and are the engineering descendants of earlier reapers. Hay is harvested somewhat differently from grain; in modern haymaking, the machine that cuts the grass is called a hay mower or, if integrated with a conditioner, a mower-conditioner. As a manual task, cutting of both...

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