History of Harvesting with a Sickle

 Tuesday's Gazette-Times article on Afghanistan contained a photograph of a farmer there harvesting wheat with a sickle. It's a picture that could have been taken at many different times and places since humans domesticated wild grains and settled onto farms. Sickles were developed soon after; archaeologists have found Mesopotamian sickles that were used as early as 7000BC.

Wheat was one of  the first crops planted by pioneers in Benton County. The rush of people west following discovery of gold in California in 1848 and in southern Oregon in 1852 increased demand for flour and hence the acreage devoted to wheat in all parts of the county.

Wheat field in the Coast Range east of Nashville circa 1905

This sickle is one of the pioneer artifacts that were part of the Hill collection, an early donation to the Horner Museum. Sickles were common tools and appropriate to harvesting small acreages.  People of all ages could learn to use them easily.  But the work was slow and laborious:  stoop over, grad a handful of wheat and sweep the sickle across the stems to make the cut. The backward C shape of the sickle balanced the weight so the tool did not rotate downward and but a strain on the user's wrist.

Technology advanced and created easier-to use tools that allowed farmers to harvest the grain in less time. The first innovation was to attach the blade to a long handle so the user could remain upright.

Placing a hand on each of the two nibs (one of which is difficult to see in the photo), the user swung the scythe in a semi-circle parallel to the ground. Using the scythe required more strength and skill so not everyone could use it.  Also, people of different heights needed scythes of different lengths.  Another person was needed to gather up the cut grain and take it to the barn. Sickles were still used with crops beaten down by rain or in fields with many rocks or stumps.

To make gathering up the grain and eliminate some of the loss of grain scattered on the ground, curved fingers were added to create a cradle to catch the cut grain and lay in down in neat rows that were easy to gather. Using a grain cradle, a farmer could harvest about 2 acres of wheat per day, instead of the half-acres possible with a sickle.

Tom and Mary Ann Hayden settled on their donation land claim in the Alsea Valley in 1854.  Tom used this grapevine cradle scythe (currently on display in the Benton County Historical Society's Corvallis Museum) to harvest wheat until 1872. At that time, he and John McCormack purchased two of the latest horse-drawn mechanical reapers and used them to cut nearly all the grain grown in the valley.

The photograph shows a horse-drawn reaper harvesting wheat on the Bennett farm near Philomath circa 1905.

John Bennett and Clint Nye operating a three horse-drawn reaper/binder
in a field on the Bennett Farm located just south of Philomath, Oregon.

 

 

 

By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Orego