Ploughs

right|thumb|upright=1.35|Traditional ploughing: a farmer works the land with horses and plough thumb|Water buffalo used for ploughing in [[Laos]] A plough or plow () (both pronounced ) 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. C

thumb|upright=1.2|Components of a simple drawn plow: thumb|right|Instrument for cleaning a plowshare used at a mill near Horažďovice, [[Czech Republic]] In agriculture, a plowshare (US) or ploughshare (UK; ) is a component of a plow (or plough). It is the cutting or leading edge, preceding the moldboard, and it closely follows the coulter (one or more ground-breaking spikes) when plowing.

simple light plough without a mouldboard

thumb|right|Great Russian sokha, illustration by Nikolay Karazin, 1899 thumb|Sokha dating to the 19th to mid-20th century

rail vehicle used to destroy railway sleepers in warfare

part of a plough that precedes the ploughshare and makes the first cut into the soil

farming technique

mine clearance system

agricultural tool

thumb | right | alt=alt=refer to caption | Bayeux Tapestry, a medieval embroidered cloth depicting the conquest of England in 1066 AD. The carruca or caruca was a kind of heavy plow important to medieval agriculture in Northern Europe. The carruca used a heavy iron plowshare to turn heavy soil and may have required a team of eight oxen. The carruca also bore a coulter and moldboard. It gave its name to the English carucate.