Crossword clues for stook
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Stook \Stook\, n. [Scot. stook, stouk; cf. LG. stuke a heap, bundle, G. stauche a truss, bundle of flax.] (Agric.) A small collection of sheaves set up in the field; a shock; in England, twelve sheaves.
Stook \Stook\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Stooked; p. pr. & vb. n. Stooking.] (Agric.) To set up, as sheaves of grain, in stooks.
Wiktionary
n. A pile or bundle, especially of straw. vb. (context agriculture English) to make stooks
Wikipedia
A stook, also referred to as a shock, is a circular or rounded arrangement of swathes of cut grain stalks placed on the ground in a field. Typically sheaves of grains such as wheat, barley and oats may be 'stooked' so they are ready for threshing.
In England a stook may also particularly refer to twelve sheaves.
The purpose of these practices is to protect unthreshed grain, hay or straw from moisture until it can be picked up and brought into long-term storage. The unthreshed grain also cures while in a stook.
The word stook may also have a general meaning of 'bundle' or 'heap' applicable to items other than sheaves or bales. For example, in the era when haystacks were common, they were also called stooks, shocks, or ricks, although today baling and haylage (either chopped and ensilaged in silos or as bales ensileaged inside polymer wrappers) have largely replaced the haystack method of storing hay. But even in the baling era, in North America, a stook also refers to a stack of six, ten or fifteen bales of hay or straw (the small square bales, each, that can picked up by a person), stacked in the field. The bales are stacked and deposited by a "stooking machine" or "stooker" that is dragged, sled-like, behind the baler. The stooking sled has four, five, or six fingers that hold the bales until the stook is complete. When the stook is complete the "stacker" steps on a lever to release the stook. The fingers drop to the ground and the finished stook slides off the fingers. The sled resets itself and is ready to be filled again. The bales are stacked on the diagonal to shed the rain and to minimize acquiring moisture from the ground before being picked up.
An automatic bale stooker was eventually designed to eliminate the need for a person to manually stack and trip the stook-release. The automatic stooker is positioned behind the baler and collects released bales and sends them up an inclined shute. The bale falls through a series of bars into the "3-2-1" configuration. Once all six bales are in position the platform trips, drops the stook in the field, and automatically returns to the loading position. Allied produced a model of stooked in the 1980s that can still be found across the countryside in Canada today.
Usage examples of "stook".
It sounds like they sent similar messages all over: Stook, Ballton, Osk, even Sark.
Trinket raced across the field, still holding the severed hand, and plunged into the stook where the other three were hiding.
Trinket and the Green Girl were left standing by the stock in which the White Nun was hidden, while the lamas squatted by another stook about ten or fifteen yards away, jabbering to each other in Tibetan.
He hurled it as far as he could, but it fell short of the stook in which the White Nun was hiding.
With a bit of luck and sufficient smoke to obscure their getaway, they might get the White Nun out of the stook before it caught fire and run with her towards this cave.
He half-dragged her through the far side of the stook to where the Green Girl was waiting.
The second sheaf of burning sorghum landed right at the foot of the stook and soon flames were shooting up from it twenty feet into the air.
Bill Door fielded a stook as it was blown past, and stacked it with the others.
In some areas late straw was stooked to dry, and Anna saw workmen pitching stooks onto the wagons and carting them to great open-sided barns.
A horse limped away, another fell among the wheat stooks, while a third raced riderless toward the west.
A few of the fields were being reaped, one or two were crowded with stooks, while many crops of oats yet waved and rustled in various stages of vanishing green.
In some areas late straw was stooked to dry, and Anna saw workmen pitching stooks onto the wagons and carting them to great open-sided barns.
The saw-like sickles had only lately been put away, and the wheat stood in stooks of eight among the tall stubble of those times.
At night this City of Trees Turns to a tryst of vague and strange And monstrous Majesties, Let loose from some dim underworld to range These terrene vistas till their twilight sets: When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand Beggared and common, plain to all the land For stooks of leaves!