The levers are used to control actions on what once was a swather, a machine used to cut the wheat and barley stalks and form a continuous row of crop ready to bundled into sheaves that could be stood up like a tripod to stay dry. Once the threshing machine was brought out to the field, the sheaves were collected and fed into the thresher where the grain was separated from the stalks, which were chopped up and blown into the air to settle on the harvested field. REAP, SHEAF, and THRESH = the process of harvesting.
