Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
When reaching the end of the furrow, the leading oxen met the end first, and were turned left along the headland, while the plough continued as long as possible in the furrow (the strongest oxen were yoked at the back, and could draw the plough on their own for this short distance). By the time the plough eventually reached the end, the oxen ...
A plough or plow (both pronounced / p l aʊ /) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. [1] Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses but modern ploughs are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or steel frame with a blade attached to cut and loosen the soil.
A four-ox-team plough, circa 1330. The ploughman is using a mouldboard plough to cut through the heavy soils. A team could plough about one acre (0.4 ha) per day. The typical planting scheme in a three-field system was that barley, oats, or legumes would be planted in one field in spring, wheat or rye in the second field in the fall and the third field would be left fallow.
A 1st-century relief thought to show the sulcus primigenius ritual during the founding of Aquileia, a Roman colony near moden Venice, Italy.The relief differs from literary accounts in that the plower is shown bareheaded and the team appears to be made of two oxen rather than a bull and a cow.
The ard, ard plough, [1] or scratch plough [2] is a simple light plough without a mouldboard.It is symmetrical on either side of its line of draft and is fitted with a symmetrical share that traces a shallow furrow but does not invert the soil.
Especially in Ulster, the practice was to attach a short plough to a horse's tail. The simple plough was cheaper than one attached with a harness. The horse would stop in pain when the plough hit a rock, which made rocks less likely to damage the plough. In 1606, an order in council prohibited the practice, with a fine of a garron.
Most ploughing was done with a heavy wooden plough with an iron coulter, pulled by oxen, which were more effective on heavy soils and cheaper to feed than horses. Obligations to the local lord usually included supplying oxen for ploughing the lord's land on an annual basis and the much resented obligation to grind corn at the lord's mill. [ 30 ]
The scratch plow which preceded the wheeled plough had been ideal for the light sandy soils of Southern Europe, and continued in use in various places, in England, on the continent and also in the Byzantine Empire. The scratch plough tended to create square fields because the field was ploughed twice, the second time at right angles to the first.