The crops Farmer grows in the fields, such as barley,
wheat, and rye, are partly edible. The seeds at the top of each plant also
known as grain are used to make products like cereal and bread, but the dry
coatings of the chaff are not edible and have to be discarded, with their
stalks.
Before modern machines were developed, farmers had to
harvest crops by carrying out many laborious operations one after one.
Initially, they had to cut down the plants with a cutting tool like a scythe.
Then, they had to detach the eatable grain from the non-edible chaff by hitting
the cut stalks—the operation known as thrashing. Lastly, they had to clean any
left-over debris left from the seeds to make it suitable to use in a mill. This
was all the time-consuming process done by a lot of people.
Gratefully, the modern combine machine or the harvesters
do the entire job automatically. A farmer merely drives them in an entire field
of crops and the combine machine cut, thresh and clean the grains all together
themselves using wheels, rotating blades, sieves, and elevators. The grain
assembles in a container inside the combine harvester and periodically emptied
into wagons hauled by tractors that drive alongside. Whereas the dry coatings
of the seeds and the stalks spurt from a large exit pipe at the back and fall
behind onto the field.
