The History of a Windrower
A windrower or swatter is an agricultural implement which rotates around a fixed axis and forms a rotating windrow on the surface of a cultivated field or other flat surface. The most common type of windrower in use today is powered by electricity (usually battery powered). “Windrower” is usually the North American term for such machines. In Australia and other locations, they are more commonly known as “windrowers.”
In addition to using the windrow to harvest grains, ethanol mills, dairy farms, rubberwood processing plants, pulp mills and distillation units are some of the other applications of windrows. Windrow technology was initially developed for the spinning industry, where it is used to grind grain and pump water to power a mill. With advances in engineering, self-propelled windrows can be used in a wide variety of applications. In agriculture, they may be used to combine harvests from multiple fields by separating the soils of different fields. Self-propelled windrows may also be used to till flat fields, where they can force the soil into the desired pattern. In the manufacturing and forestry industries, self-propelled windrows may be used to harvest trees, cut down brush, clear away clumps of brush, strip trees of brush or other vegetation and perform other tree-related activities.
Windrowers have been in existence for hundreds of years. They were initially developed to increase the productivity of the average farm. Self-propelled windrows eventually became part of the average farm. Today, many farmers still use a water or windrower to help with such tasks as tilling the soil, fencing in or otherwise physically securing a field. Self-propelled windrows are also used to increase the productivity of sports teams and other teams that use a large amount of grain each day.