Reaping grain with a sickle and a scythe

Reaping was gang work done bent double, a toothed hook in one hand and a fistful of stalks in the other, with binders and stookers following behind. Patrick Bell had a working machine in Fifeshire in 1826, but it was McCormick's shearing knife rather than Bell's scissor action that every later reaper copied, and McCormick patented the design in 1834. The hand tools went slowly and were still cutting most of the grain in small-farm regions of France at the end of the nineteenth century. They are used today for lodged crops, narrow terraces, thatching straw and the edges a machine cannot reach, and the judgment that stayed human is the timing of the cut, since grain taken too green will not fill and grain left too long will shed.