Sheaf (agriculture)

: sheaves) is a bunch of cereal-crop stems bound together after reaping, traditionally by sickle, later by scythe or, after its introduction in 1872, by a mechanical reaper-binder.

Traditional hand-reapers, using scythes and working as a team, cut a field of grain clockwise, starting from an outside edge and finishing in the middle.

Three to eight sheaves make up each stook, which forms a self-supporting A-frame with the grain-heads meeting at the top.

The traditional sheaf pitchfork has a long wooden handle, two short tynes and a rounded back to make the placing of sheaves easy.

The mechanisation of agriculture in industrialised countries, in particular the introduction of the combine harvester from the middle of the 19th century, has made the sheaf redundant, but sheaves remain in widespread use wherever harvesting is still done by hand or by reaper-binder.