The balk, back, bauk Lowland Scots, leum-iochd or bailc/bac Scottish Gaelic was a strip of a corn field left fallow. The fear of being left with the last sheaf of the harvest called the cailleach (kulyach etc) or gobhar bhacach (the goat of the balk) always led to an exciting competition among the reapers in the last field. The reaper who came on a leum-iochd would of course be glad to have so much less to cut. Scots is an Anglic variety spoken in Scotland, where it is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic spoken by some in the Highlands and Islands (especially the Hebrides). ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Species T. boeoticum T. compactum T. dicoccoides T. dicoccon T. durum T. monococcum T. spelta T. sphaerococcum References:   ITIS 42236 2002-09-22 Wheat (Triticum spp. ... In mathematics, a sheaf F on a given topological space X gives a set or richer structure F(U) for each open set U of X. The structures F(U) are compatible with the operations of restricting the open set to smaller subsets and gluing smaller open sets to obtain... Hay bales after harvest in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany In agriculture, harvesting is the process of gathering mature crops from the fields. ... In Irish and Scottish mythology, Cailleach was the Mother of All. The word Cailleac means old woman. She was a sorceress. ... Species See Species and subspecies The goat is a mammal in the genus Capra, which consists of nine species: the Ibex, the West Caucasian Tur, the East Caucasian Tur, the Markhor, and the Wild Goat. ... Competition is the act of striving against another force for the purpose of achieving dominance or attaining a reward or goal, or out of a biological imperative such as survival. ... The reaper was a horse-drawn farm implement invented in 1831 and patented by Cyrus McCormick in 1834 to cut small grain crops. ... Look up field in Wiktionary, the free dictionary A green field or paddock Field may refer to: A field is an open land area, used for growing agricultural crops. ...

An old saying was "better a balk in autumn, than a sheaf the more." Rev. Michie of Dinnet heard the above saying in a different sense in the Highlands of Aberdeenshire, viz. that in lands allotted on the run-rig system, the crofter who got a balk attached to his rig was considered luckier than his neighbour with a somewhat larger rig, because, but without the balk, the grass of which was of more than compensating value, especially for fodder etc. Fall redirects here. ... Look up saying in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Scottish Highlands are the mountainous regions of Scotland north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Run rig is the name for a type of arable cultivation practised in north and west Britain especially Scotland during the middle ages. ... In Scotland a croft is a small parcel of agricultural land that is occupied and farmed by a crofter who pays rent to the landlord who owns the land. ... An area of grass-like plants Grass generally describes a monocotyledonous green plant in the family Poaceae, botanically regarded as true grasses. ... In agriculture, fodder or animal feed is any foodstuff that is used specifically to feed livestock, such as cattle, sheep, chickens and pigs. ...

In Heart of Midlothian (1818) by Walter Scott, he glosses it as "an unploughed ridge of land interposed among the corn" The Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh For the Scottish football (soccer) club Heart of Midlothian, see Heart of Midlothian F.C. The Heart of Midlothian is the seventh of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, and by many considered the finest. ... 1818 (MDCCCXVIII) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Saturday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar. ... Portrait of Sir Walter Scott, by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832) was a prolific Scottish historical novelist and poet popular throughout Europe during his time. ...

Gregor's Folk-lore of North East Scotland (1881) says: 1881 (MDCCCLXXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...

"Even in the cultivated parts of larger size there was no regularity. They were twisted, bent like a bow, zig-zag, of all shapes, and cut up by 'baaks', into which were gathered stones and such weeds as were taken from the portion under crop."

Bauks were also used as boundaries between neighbours' land. Robertson's General view of Agriculture in Perth (1799) says: 1799 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ...

"Large slices of land are left unploughed, as boundaries between the alternate ridges of neighbours, in the same plough-gate; which are a perpetual nursery of weeds, besides the loss of so much land lying waste. These earthern boundaries... are wearing fast out, in this country."

This indicates that they were well in decline in parts of Lowland Scotland in the late 18th century. However, the word is recorded in the 1920s north east Scotland, as referring to a path between fields, obviously a residual use with a slightly different meaning. A ploughgate was a Scottish land measurement, used in the south and the east of the country. ...

References

• This article incorporates text from “Dwelly’s [Scottish] Gaelic Dictionary” (1911) (leum-iochd)