My Flax to Fiber Adventure Part 3

 

 

 

 

As many of you know, I have been growing flax this summer with a plan to turn it into fiber for spinning (or at least attempt to.) You can read the previous posts about my experiment here and here.

Harvesting

Because of COVID-19, I’ve been working from home and have been able to keep a closer watch on the plants all summer. Early in the season, they were protected with hail cloth. (We have an entire season of hail here.) As the summer progressed, the hail cloth was replaced by shade cloth. (The Denver sun can easily scald or kill sensitive plants in a day.) By mid-summer my 3 by 8 foot garden bed was a sea of tiny blue flowers and I was glad that harvesting takes place after the flowers have faded. It would have been hard to pull up such beautiful flowering plants.

 

 

Harvesting has been staggered because I sowed the seeds over a period of weeks. (I wasn’t sure of the optimal planting time and wanted to make sure I hit it with at least some of the seeds.) Because the fibers extend the length of the stalk, plants are pulled up roots and all during harvest. The last of my flax was harvested about a week ago. I then bundled the stalks with twine and hung them up to dry, which took only a few days because of our arid weather.

Rippling – or removing the seed pods from the stalks – is the next step.  This is usually accomplished by pulling stalks through nails on a board. My friend Cheryl suggested I could use a comb for this step and it worked perfectly for my small crop.

Retting

My bundles of flax are now ready for retting – soaking the stalks in water. Retting enables bacteria to rot away the cellular material around the fiber so the fiber can be more easily removed. This can take from five days to six weeks depending on the mineral content of the water, temperature, and other factors. Apparently, if I leave the flax in the water too long, it will be ruined. But if I leave it for too short a time, the fibers won’t seperate from the cellular material. Directions on this step seem a little fuzzy and involve both inuition (of which I have lots) and experience (of which I have none), and perhaps a Magic 8 Ball. We’ll see how it goes.

Traditionally retting was done by placing the stalks in a running creek or a large outdoor tub. Alternately, in very humid areas, the plants were laid out for the morning dew to soak in. I had planned for retting to happen in a large tub in my backyard, but the weather in Denver is going to take a drastic turn. The temperature will be dropping from 100 degrees today to 26 degrees on Tuesday. So I think it will be safer to rett the flax in my bathtub. Although I didn’t see this option mentioned in any of the books and videos, I can’t imagine in flax’s 2,000 year history that I am the only one to rett flax in their bathtub.

Project Status

That sums up the progress of my flax project so far. I don’t know how this experiment is going to turn out. I am hopeful that I will create some usable fiber. But whether I get fiber this year or not, I have found this whole experiment to be fun and deeply satisfying. It has given me the opportunity to contemplate this gift of fiber and cloth, co-created by both the plant and our ancestors. And more than contemplating, it has allowed me to touch the process in some small way. I am still mystified that our ancestors figured it out.

And I am totally on board to do this again next year.

More Information on Retting

Homegrown Flax to Retting – Mother Earth News

Retting Flax from Wikipedia