The Story of the Tool’s Discovery by Erez

While exploring the moshavim in search of old tools, around 1998, Erez noticed an agricultural implement of unclear origin, lying at the boundary of the backyards of Hanina Regev and Aharon Noy (RIP) in Moshav Herut.

Assuming that Hanina was the owner, Erez approached him and requested to donate the tool to the museum. Hanina Regev explained that it was a reaping machine that had belonged to his father and was used for collecting and stacking the harvested grain, and that he was not interested in parting with it.

During a later visit, Erez noticed that the reaper was gone. Hanina told him that it had been transferred to Erez Noy, who immediately agreed to donate it to the museum, adding that his father (Aharon Noy) had brought the tool to the yard.

On this occasion, Hanina also agreed to the donation.

The Story of the Restoration

In recent years, we have been working at the Tractor Museum in Ein Vered to restore and refurbish the reaper—a tool that had been found as a rusty wreck. Over the past two years, we brought it to perfect working condition, as it would have been when it was first used in the fields to harvest wheat approximately 160 years ago. Most of the work was carried out by our friend Gidi Zilberstein, known for his high level of precision and attention to detail.

In early June 2017, we took the restored reaper out to a wheat field in Moshav Yogev, where we were able to operate the restored reaper in action, seeing it perform its function. Time was short, and the field was somewhat rough, so we could not demonstrate its operation as it would have been when properly calibrated and drawn by a pair of horses, as it was used 150 years ago…

It is important to explain and emphasize the role and significance of the reaper in the history of agricultural machinery.

The Importance of the Reaper in Agricultural History

Bread has been mankind’s staple food for the past ten thousand years, and it is usually made from wheat flour. Wheat is a plant from the grass family, whose seeds, the grains, can be stored year-round in a dry state, eliminating the need to consume them immediately. Wheat grows quickly and easily, and it was this crop that caused early humans to stop wandering, settle near the land they cultivated, and pass down the knowledge of wheat cultivation from generation to generation.

Over thousands of generations, humans engaged in selective breeding of wheat varieties that were better suited to local soil and climate conditions around the world, aiming to maximize yield. Among other things, varieties were chosen that were better suited for harvesting, threshing, cleaning, storing, and baking.

One of the problems with wheat cultivation, until relatively recently, was the short window of time between the ripening of the grain and the point at which the grains would fall to the ground with any touch or breeze. Until the invention of the reaping machine (mid-19th century), wheat was harvested using sickles or scythes. The harvested material was then manually gathered into sheaves. These sheaves were collected at the threshing floor, where threshing took place to separate the wheat stalks and chaff from the clean grains, which were then ground into flour when needed. Over the years, tools for this process were improved—from the ancient morg and zriya methods, to steam-powered threshing machines, and finally to the giant combines of our era.

When planning the size of a field to plant, farmers needed to consider their ability to mobilize labor during the short harvest period. In 19th-century America, in the Midwest, land was not a limiting factor—anyone could request as much land as they wanted, but the limitation was labor for the harvest.

"Necessity is the mother of invention." Cyrus McCormick, a blacksmith who developed the reaper we still use today, sought a way to increase labor productivity during the wheat harvest, thus expanding global grain production and feeding more people.

In the mid-19th century, McCormick invented the reaper.

By adding wings and a surface to the reaper, the machine greatly increased the harvesting efficiency per worker per day, enabling the expansion of seeded areas.

The reaper was drawn by a pair of horses or oxen, the main source of power in agriculture until the advent of the tractor. The mechanisms were powered by a drive wheel, with the option to engage or disengage from the operator's seat. The wings served two purposes: 1) to present the upright wheat stalks to the reaping knife, preventing jams and lifting fallen stalks, and 2) once a sufficient amount of stalks had accumulated on the surface, to sweep them into neat piles, ready to be tied into sheaves.

With a sophisticated mechanism, the driver could adjust how many "sweeps" were made between each clearing, depending on the density and height of the stalks (ranging from one to four sweeps). The driver also had control over the harvest height and could fold the surface for transport between fields. It took twenty years to develop the "malmata," which allowed wheat to be harvested, gathered, and tied into sheaves while moving across the field. The use of reaper-binders continued until the 1930s, primarily on small farms.

The first reaper brought to our country belonged to a group of Christians from the United States who believed that the coming of the Messiah would be hastened by the resettling of the land of Israel. They arrived in the Holy Land in 1860, but despite the modern equipment (for the time), they could not withstand disease and harassment by Arabs in Jaffa, and returned to Maine (USA) in 1870.

The first reapers in Jewish agriculture in the land were brought by the PICA company to the settlements under its care. In the 1930s, these reapers were replaced by modern combines.

When it was time to harvest the grain in the spring and early summer, the reapers went into action. In the early years, from 1925 to 1930, at Sheik-Abrik, the reaper-binder was used. The combine (harvester-thresher) eventually replaced the reaper-binder.

Written by Eric Yizhar / Uncle Aharon