Gift of Flax

Happy Full Moon – March 7, 2023

An Origin Story

There is an old Norse tale of a farmer who was given the gift of flax by the goddess Holda. While chasing after his sheep, he discovered a secret doorway into a glacier. And upon entering the doorway, the farmer discovered a cave filled with dazzling gemstones. In the midst of the crystals, Holda stood in her silvery robes with a bouquet of blue flowers. The goddess told him he could choose anything in the cave to take home with him.

As he surveyed the cave the gemstones sparkled and seemed to call to him. Yet his eyes kept returning to the little bouquet of blue flowers that Holda held in her hands. And then in an instant of clarity, the farmer knew he needed the flowers. Holda smiled and told the farmer he had chosen wisely. She gifted him with the flowers, and also seeds to plant more. When he returned home, his wife was quite upset that he had chosen seeds and a bouquet over gemstones, but he had faith.

He planted the seeds and they grew into a field of beautiful blue flax flowers. As the flowers faded, Holda again appeared to the farmer. She taught how to harvest, process, and spin the flax into linen thread for clothing, ropes, nets, and more.

Gift of Flax

The farmer had indeed chosen well. The gift of flax fibers has served humans for thousands of years. Archaeologists discovered remnants of woven flax fibers in a cave in the Caucasus Mountains that are estimated to be 30,000 years old. These were wild flax, gathered – not planted by humans. But cultivated flax (Linum usitatissimum) has been grown in Egypt and the Mediterranean region for at least 9,000 years – a very long time.

The gift of flax has provided humans with basic clothing, elaborate costumes, and bedding. Our ancestors spun and wove nets for fishing and immense sails for ships. At various times flax was used as currency. And it was embedded into culture and religious practices of honoring the dead and representations of goddesses with spindles or spinning wheels. The story of flax is part of the tapestry of human history.

What is intriguing is that there is nothing about this plant that would suggest fabric is hidden within (unlike cotton for example). It is a thin willowy plant. The secret is in the bast fibers which run the length of the stem between the woody core and outer layer. Releasing the bast fibers from the rest of the plant seems like a complicated process when you first learn of it. There are strange names for processing like retting, scutching, and breaking. However, what I’ve realized over the last three years is that it is just labor intensive and time consuming. It’s not that complicated.

Growing and Spinning

My own story of discovering flax is more mundane than bumping into a goddess in a hidden cave, but I think magical in its own way.  At the beginning of the pandemic, after reading  The Golden Thread, I was inspired to grow flax and attempt to turn it into linen. You can read some of my original adventure here.

So three years in, I am not only growing flax, but have learned to manage a drop spindle (pictured on the right) to create my own linen. For me the gift of flax is learning this magical process of working with a plant from my garden and spinning it into thread. My spinning is still rough and probably best suited for wall hangings rather than fine fabric, but spinning itself is a wonderful mindfulness practice. It involves movement, focus, tactile awareness, and connection to the earth and plant kingdom.

Additionally, working with flax as it transforms from loose fiber to thread is a powerful remembrance of our ancestors who engaged in this process as a necessity.

Inviting Flax into Your Garden

If you’d like to try your hand at growing and spinning flax, look for seed varieties that are meant for fiber. You can extract fiber from any flax plant. However, perennial varieties and some annuals are more branching, so you won’t get long strands of fiber. (See resources below for sources of seeds.)

Flax is easy to grow. A good guideline is to sow seeds at the same time as peas. Scatter the seeds thickly, rather than in rows, so the plants can support each other as they grow. Flax does prefer cooler weather, but I’ve grown some successfully through one of Denver’s sweltering summers. My plants did fine.

I work compost into the bed before planting and mulch to retain moisture. Keep the bed weeded when the plants are young, and then if you’ve planted thickly enough the flax will help keep down other weeds. 

Flax is ready to harvest after flowers have faded and the seeds are almost formed. For more details on harvesting flax, see this post. 

Tuning into the Magic

Even if you do nothing but admire the lovely blue flowers, think about including flax in your garden this spring. In my book, Growing Mindful, I wrote about one energetic property of flax, serendipity – the happy fact that humans discovered how to work with this plant. But flax has of course other energetic properties like creativity, beauty, connectedness, and transformation. Spinning and joining fibers, as they shape shift from flax to linen is a part of our deep connection to the plant kingdom. Tune into the story – the longevity with human history, the way plants have served us, and our relationship to the plant kingdom. Plant some flax in your garden to tap into this awareness and appreciation of the magic.

Resources

The Big Book of Flax by Christian & Johannes Zinzendorf

Linen Hand Spinning and Weaving by Patricia Baines 

Spinning Flax with Josefin Waltin on YouTube

Flax to Linen by Crowing Hen on YouTube

Seeds – authors of The Big Book of Flax sell seeds through their website: www.flaxforsale.com

About this Lunar Blog Post Series

This article is part of my lunar blog series. New moon posts focus generally on garden and mindfulness related topics. Full moon posts focus on one of the plants featured in my book, Growing Mindful, Explorations in the Garden to Deepen Your Awareness. For more details on the lunar blog post series and to see past posts click here. 

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