Harrow (tool) in the context of "Medieval demography"

Tillage is the agricultural preparation of soil by mechanical agitation of various types, such as digging, stirring, and overturning. Examples of human-powered tilling methods using hand tools include shoveling, picking, mattock work, hoeing, and raking. Examples of draft-animal-powered or mechanized work include ploughing (overturning with moldboards or chiseling with chisel shanks), rototilling, rolling with cultipackers or other rollers, harrowing, and cultivating with cultivator shanks (teeth).

Tillage that is deeper and more thorough is classified as primary, and tillage that is shallower and sometimes more selective of location is secondary. Primary tillage such as ploughing tends to produce a rough surface finish, whereas secondary tillage tends to produce a smoother surface finish, such as that required to make a good seedbed for many crops. Harrowing and rototilling often combine primary and secondary tillage into one operation.

A rake (Old English raca, cognate with Dutch hark, German Rechen, from the root meaning "to scrape together", "heap up") is a broom for outside use; a versatile horticultural implement consisting of a toothed bar fixed transversely to a handle, or tines fixed to a handle, and used to collect leaves, hay, grass, and in gardening, for loosening the soil, light weeding and to make furrows, mounds and levelling, removing dead grass from lawns, and generally for purposes performed in agriculture by the harrow. Depending on purpose, their materials and form will vary greatly.

Large mechanized versions of rakes are used in farming, called hay rakes, are built in many different forms (e.g. star-wheel rakes, rotary rakes). Non mechanized farming may be done with various forms of a hand rake. Rakes can be a mechanical component of a Threshing machine.

A plough or (in the United States) plow (both pronounced /plaʊ/) is a farm tool for loosening or turning soil before sowing seed or planting. 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. It has been fundamental to farming for most of history. The earliest ploughs had no wheels; such a plough was known to the Romans as an aratrum. Celtic peoples first came to use wheeled ploughs in the Roman era.

The prime purpose of ploughing is to turn over the uppermost soil, bringing fresh nutrients to the surface while burying weeds and crop remains to decay. Trenches cut by the plough are called furrows. In modern use, a ploughed field is normally left to dry and then harrowed before planting. Ploughing and cultivating soil evens the content of the upper 12 to 25 centimetres (5 to 10 in) layer of soil, where most plant feeder roots grow.

A cultivator (also known as a rotavator) is a piece of agricultural equipment used for secondary tillage. One sense of the name refers to frames with teeth (also called shanks) that pierce the soil as they are dragged through it linearly. Another sense of the name also refers to machines that use the rotary motion of disks or teeth to accomplish a similar result, such as a rotary tiller.

Cultivators stir and pulverize the soil, either before planting (to aerate the soil and prepare a smooth, loose seedbed) or after the crop has begun growing (to kill weeds—controlled disturbance of the topsoil close to the crop plants kills the surrounding weeds by uprooting them, burying their leaves to disrupt their photosynthesis or a combination of both). Unlike a harrow, which disturbs the entire surface of the soil, cultivators are designed to disturb the soil in careful patterns, sparing the crop plants but disrupting the weeds.

Tines (/ˈtaɪnz/; also spelled tynes), prongs or teeth are parallel or branching spikes forming parts of a tool or natural object. They are used to spear, hook, move or otherwise act on other objects. They may be made of wood, bone, metal, or similar materials.

The number of tines on tools varies widely a pitchfork may have just two, a garden fork may have four, and a rake or harrow many. Tines may be blunt, such as those on a fork used as an eating utensil; or sharp, as on a pitchfork; or even barbed, as on a trident. The terms tine and prong are synonymous. A tooth of a comb is a tine. The term is also used on musical instruments such as the Jew's harp, tuning fork, guitaret, electric piano, music box or mbira (kalimba) which contain long protruding metal spikes ("tines") which are plucked to produce notes.