Thrave

Twenty-four sheaves of corn, being two stooks.

From the Old Norse threfi, and like much of the harvest vocabulary of northern England it came in with the Danes. A thrave is two stooks, which is twenty-four sheaves, though a count of twelve is recorded in some districts and the sheaf itself was never standardised.

It was a reckoning unit rather than a handling one. Nobody carried a thrave; they counted in thraves when the tithe was taken, when a reaper’s wages were settled, and when thatching straw was sold, because a thrave was a quantity both parties could agree on by looking at the field.

That is the common thread in the harvest measures: they describe what the work produces at a particular stage, so the sheaf, the stook and the thrave are really one unit counted at three different moments between the scythe and the stack.