How easy is it to grow flax? Your questions answered!

Sara von Tresckow of The Woolgatherers http://www.woolgatherers.com has very kindly sent me some overview thoughts on the whole linen growing process. She has been growing, processing and working with flax and linen for many years, and her help is like having someone who can spin (flax) straw into gold (linen) thread as a mentor.

If you’re thinking of growing some flax in 2013 but are wondering how much work is involved and how difficult it will be, here’s what she had to say in reply to my many questions regarding soil preparation and planting:

You are way overintellectualizing this whole process. As is typical for folks in N. America who have never done this, the emphasis is on "just the perfect plot and fertilizer, etc".

You should start hanging loose now. When we send out flax seed, we include an instruction sheet written by Virginia Parslow who once worked at the museum in Cooperstown, NY. She states that nearly every third flax crop planted by colonists went bad. The success rate by professionals is also not 100%.

Since flax does not like excess nitrogen, and we modern folk tend to overdo on nutrients, your intended patch ** is surely going to work. It just might happen , though, that you do everything correctly and nature does not cooperate - and you just have to be ready to try again.

This is something like learning to bake where you need experience to have good success and to know what success is, you need to experience at least difficulty if not some failings.

In preparation, I'd advise looking and touching commercial linen thread and fabric, visiting museums with vintage linen pieces - to get an idea of what you'd like to achieve.

What you really need to pay attention to are following:

1. Location and moisture - flax likes to be shrouded in moisture during the
   growing season. Proximity to a body of water is helpful. The group in Green
   Bay had a plot near Lake Michigan that worked better than our backyard that
   is inland. A low spot collects the dew better than a spot that is elevated.
   Artificial watering, etc. is not ideal - the plant likes to have the right
   conditions supplied by nature.
2. Location and wind - flax likes to lodge quickly. Better than trace
   elements and other weird stuff - do as I read in a 19th century German
   book - for small plots put a chickenwire fence around the plot - 80cm if no
   deer, higher if deer are present. Using baling twine, crisscross the plot in
   an x - binding the twine on the corner fence posts. This keeps wildlife out
   and the flax upright. Naturally some sort of windbreak ahead of your plot -
   in the prevailing wind direction will also be helpful.
3. Weeding barefoot at 10cm plant height is IMPERATIVE!!! If you miss weeds
   at this point, there is no going back to get them later.
4. Seed density at sowing influences fiber fineness. If the plants are too
   far apart, the fibers will grow stronger and somewhat coarses. Thickly sown,
   the fiber is finer - to a point - where it becomes weak and unusable.
   Usually with hand sowing you get mixed density - just sort the plants a bit
   at harvest time to put similar stalks together.

Hope this is as helpful to all you soon to be flax growers as it was for me.

Makes the process look way less daunting, and I'm now prepared for potential failure if the weather doesn't co operate this year.

Penny

**  This is the plot that Caitlin ffrench http://wewilltellyouallofoursecrets.blogspot.ca/ is going to grow at Means of Production garden http://moparrc.com/


　
　　

How to calculate the amount of flax seed you’ll need to grow yourself a shirt in 2013, and has anyone seen old hackles for sale?

We now have a Canadian source of flax seed http://biolin.sk.ca, and what lovely people they are too. They research and promote the growing of flax in Canada for linen, oil and shive (straw), sell processed flax for spinning, shive for mulch and pet bedding and lots more uses.
I have had several very nice informative emails from them and they’re taking a real interest in the Vancouver Flax Project, even though they’re aware it’s only tiny compared to the amount that farmers grow in Saskatchewan.

Randy Cowan, their Director of Operations recommends ‘Elektra’ as the best variety for our climate and to produce a good fibre yield. He was kind enough to include details of how much you would need and how densely it needs to be sown. They’re happy to sell small or large amounts of seed to whoever wants it.

For those of you busy calculating how much you’ll need to order from them to grow yourselves some linen, here’s what he had to say:

The seed needed depends on the seeding method, if you are broadcasting (scattering) the seed then you will want to aim for a 2,000 plants per meter squared, this will make the plants compete and thus will give you a consistent small stem, easy to ret and decorticate. If you are row seeding the competition would not be as good as broadcasting, the loss in emergent plant count is also not consistently known as the seed now has to compete with its neighbor in the row as well as the environment.

Fiber Flax Seed is 5 grams per 1,000 seeds (Elektra is a fiber variety)
Assume a 90% vigor/emergence because not all seed reacts to the environment the same.
So, for every square meter seeded with fiber flax = 2,000 seed desired seed times 5 grams per 1,000 seeds times 90% vigor/emergence = 12 grams per meter squared
Things have not gone so well on the sourcing hackles for flax processing (more about what they’re for in another post).

My supplier, the only supplier of new hackles on the continent, has family heath problems, and cannot be sure if they can provide me with hackles at all. I’m fairly sure they forge and build them themselves. Alden Amos and Stephanie Gaustad have been famous in the spinning world for many decades for their beautifully made fibre tools and wheels. For those of you not sure what I’m talking about when I say 'hackles', here is a link showing what flax hackles look like.

http://pweb.jps.net/~gaustad/flax.html
Old ones, which frequently can be found in antique stores labeled as florist’s frogs, or broken wire brushes, look like this….http://www.mainememory.net/artifact/14773
If you see one anywhere please let Penny or Sharon know and we’ll go and buy it immediately! They do appear on eBay, but are snapped up very quickly.

Now you’ve seen the pictures you can understand where the saying ‘ it made the dog’s hackles rise’ comes from!

Penny
　

Urban Yarn Harvesting to subvert Christmas present to Christmas past

On Christmas eve we got together in the field house to undermine the last 40 years of Christmas tradition.........

What if told you that you could change your knitting habits so that it could mean saving CO2 rather than increasing it and rather than contributing to global climate change, actually helped reduce it?

What if I told you that there's an infinite supply of very cheap cashmere, silk and merino yarns out there waiting to be mined? Got your interest?

With this in mind, Martin Borden http://martinborden.wordpress.com/ went out hunting. He came back with a navy blue, thrift store, pure merino frame knitted sweater. I was able to confirm that this was the kind of sweater that you could easily unravel. Some sweaters are made garment shaped (like an hand knitter would knit them) and some are cut from a sheet of knitted fabric - this latter kind don't unravel except as short yarn lengths, as the edges have been cut. Not very useful.

Flushed with success, he went out for a Urban Yarn Harvest hunt at Value Village. His haul included several silk, cashmere, and cashmere and silk blend sweaters.

We spent Christmas Eve unpicking the seams and using my spinning wheel to unravel the yarn. The neck  alone of the merino sweater prouced 50g - worth more than the garment had cost!

Commerical yarn sweaters are made of very fine yarn, so plying the threads together gives you a handknitting weight. Currently Martin is working on plying a gold silk with the navy merino yarn to produce a tweed-like effect for knitting his next sweater. He has made himself a patented sweater unraveller from an old hand drill, and intends to ply on a drop spindle. He drops his spindle over the bannisters and down into his stair well for maximum efficiency. I hope he'll put some photos up on his blog to show you all this!

Don't forget that you can also unravel unnatural fibre yarns like acrylic and ply them onto wool  to make excellent sock yarn. Also, don't throw away all the short lengths that you can end up with when yarn breaks. Chop them into 3-5cm lengths and add them into your fleece as you spin. Makes great 'art yarn' and also is a way to introduce some silk (or cashmere, or merino) into what you're spinning.

If you don't spin (and don't forget you can learn how to do that at Urban Weaver) you can always compost your yarn ends or bury them under your beans for moisture retention (old English gardener's trick!).

So, with just a drop spindle, and a bit of luck in the UYH hunt, you can save wool, cashmere, silk, cotton and acrylic yarns from the landfill, or from being exported (at great CO2 cost) to poorer countries. In the countries where they are shipped, they rob the local weavers and spinners of a living and undermine the local cloth and weaving traditions that have been passed down for centuries. You can save the shipping of new fibre around the world several times in the quest to get it produced into yarn and then garments at as close to slave labour wages as possible. You can save the production of cotton and the environmental and water degradation that entails, the strangle-hold of Monsanto that has lead to so many Indian farmers killing themselves, and the forced labour of children in Uzbekistan*. With just a little effort you can subvert what has become the season norm, save greenhouse gases and have your gift giving not contribute to global climate change and human misery. Now wouldn't that be a merrier Christmas?

Plus, you could be giving your knitting and weaving friends balls of  unique, one of a kind Urban Yarn for Christmas next year, and you even have time to knit/weave something for them - how cool is that? And if you need to learn any of the techniques to achieve that, it's all free at the Urban Weaver on Monday nights - just ask and I'll set up a workshop.

Penny

*PS If you want to lean how to spin and knit cotton wool balls into a face cloth that can be washed for years, ask me how. No need to buy cotton wool balls, use them once and throw them away.......

Urban Weaver flax project update - grow some of your own!

At the end of November I dug over a space in a garden that I 'borrow' and covered it with cardboard to stop weeds regrowing.

It was manured last year, so from what I read that should be sufficient nitrogen for next year's growing season. Flax does not require much nitrogen. Over-fertilizing can result in long spindly stalks that lodge easily. The ratio of N:P:K should be 4:7:7.

Nothing left to do until spring planting but get on with the planning.

I am getting plans from http://www.woolgatherers.com/FlaxTools.html for the scutcher, breaker and rippler. Martin Border (he of the lovely spindled, walnut dyed knitted sweater) will be building them.

The hackles will come from Dragonfly Farm http://pweb.jps.net/~gaustad/flax.html. These are the most expensive part of the project and will take up almost all of the grant.

I'm still looking for a Canadian supplier of 'Marilyn' flax seed, otherwise will have to order it from Kentucky http://flaxforsale.com/html/the_store.html.

There are two people who are going to grow flax in plots of their own (in community gardens). Of course they'll be able to take advantage of the flax processing equipment at the field house to make their own linen.

So if you want to grow some flax for yourself, remember that the processing equipment will be here for you to use once you've dried and retted your crop.

It takes a 20x20 foot plot to grow enough to make a shirt, but you can always grow a smaller amount over several years and save it. Once the flax is dried, it can be retted at any time. Once it is retted it can be processed at any time. Of course the linen fibre will keep for hundreds of years!

You can read the blog posts here and see when I plant/weed/harvest/rett etc and follow along with your crop.

Crafty Mondays in January

There will be craft nights again starting January 7th, (actually I'll be there December 24th too if anyone wants to come along).

So far nothing is booked in as a topic for January 7th, but January 14th we will be warping an Ashford knitter's loom and looking at simple small looms you can make at home.

January 21st will be making crochet lace edges. Bring along some fine crochet cotton and anything you want to make a lace edge for (like a pillow case). I have some fine crochet hooks for this - Dressew sells them at $1 for 6!

Crafty Monday's start at 6pm and run until 8.

If there's something else you want to learn or teach us, please come along and let me know. 

Meanwhile, here's Martin's blog about the process of learning to spindle and knit since October this year, and the sweater he has almost completed http://martinborden.wordpress.com/ just to tempt you into the idea of making a sweater from scratch yourself.

 

Monday 10th and 17th December craft evenings cancelled

Sorry to give you such short notice folks, but we've just been told that Andy (my husband) will be having eye surgery on Monday.

It will leave him totally blind for a while, and assuming all goes well it will take 6 weeks to recover his sight. I therefore don't feel I can committ to anymore Monday craft nights this year.

Look out on this blog for information about Mondays in January.....................

Penny

How to grow a shirt and other revolutionary ideas

http://fiberarts.ca/blog/how-to-grow-a-shirt/

I thought people might find the linked article interesting. You can see all the steps that will be involved in the flax growing and processing (apart from building the processing equipment) from soil prep to shirt.


I also thought it might be time to talk about the reason for this project. Then Sharon Kallis, the motivational force behind the Urban Weaver Project wrote this blogpost from Mexico.

http://sharonkallis.com/2012/11/25/mexico-gifts-of-time-and-patience-week-4-5-of-7/

It pretty much sums up why the flax project is important.

We are all inextricably linked in space and time by what we choose to buy, what we choose to eat, how we choose to move about. When we choose a car journey over transit, we are choosing to support the destruction of habitat and water quality, the loss of a place to live and food to eat for other people in countries that have ‘the curse of oil’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse. When we fly/drive/eat meat we choose our own convenience over the global climate change that it causes and the resultant damage and destruction now and to our children’s future.
When we shop, we buy the future planetary conditions for our and other people’s children.

It is already possible for us to live in another way that takes into account the consequences of our choices. For me, the flax growing project is just an extension of those choices.

Not many generations ago it wasn’t possible to buy clothes made from fibers grown half a world away, then in processing shipped round the globe several times to exploit people who would work much cheaper than we would ourselves. There wasn’t the oil available to do that.

People grew their own fibers and made their own clothing. They treasured the clothes they made, aware of the labour that went into them. It’s perfectly possible to grow our own flax here - we have the ideal climate.  By next summer there will be the equipment available free to all for processing flax, made by Martin Borden (more about him below). Already you can come to McLean field house and learn the skills of spinning and weaving, knitting and dyeing - for free.

All you need is to find space for your flax. Ask your neighbours if they will let you grow some in their garden (the flowers are so pretty!). Get a plot on a community garden and grow some. If you can’t find enough space for a large enough crop in one year, take 2 years to grow enough for your shirt.

Meanwhile, why not do something revolutionary in 2012?

Buy some local fleece. Make a spindle. Dye your yarn with local dye material, and knit yourself a sweater.

Martin Borden, Urban Weaver’s woodworker and film maker learned to spindle in October, to knit in November, dyed his spun yarn with walnut hulls gathered from the sidewalk in the West End and is doing just that!

Penny