Plough

A basic farming tool used for doing the land. Several most important jobs are done with the plough, the first one being – turning over the surface layer of the soil. This thorough agricultural work is called ploughing. There areploughs of various shapes, but its basic parts are a mobile element on the wheels, whose one end is in the hands of a farmers, and an iron part that goes into the ground. At first, ploughs were pulled by people, then the oxen, then the horses and finally, the machines – tractors.

LANGUAGE

The Serbian word ralo is the name for an old type of the plough. The word tractor comes from the Latin verb, trahere, meaning to draw, to pull.

ART

More, Marko, ne ori drumova!
More, Turci, ne gaz’te oranja!

Diže Marko ralo i volove,
Te on pobi Turke janjičare.

From a popular epic song, Ploughing of Marko Kraljević

HISTORY

Since the beginnings of farming in the regions of fertile and easily doable land along the Nile in Egypt, all the works were done manually or with a hoe. Oxen were started to be used for ploughing from the 6th century B.C. in Mesopotamia.  We know about the old shapes of ploughs from the Babylonian and Ancient Egyptian painted images.

Today the plough is pulled by the tractor – a mechanised ploughing machine. It is quite a universal machine for farming not so vast areas. Besides a plough, other implement can be attached to the tractor – a harrow, a mower, watering or fertilising tanks, pesticide sprinklers; it can also be used for harvesting potato or sugar beet.