The Aberthau Community Centre Flax Plot and Retting Pond

Here’s the latest picture of the 84sq m plot with its seedling flax and a range of dye plants.

Some of the dye plants are also edible (carrot tops, amaranth), and the marigolds not only dye but they draw aphids and carrot root fly away from the other plants.

Just out of the picture is a permanently flooded area that we are now using as a retting pond. We were given some old flax plants grown in Vancouver that the grower hadn't retted (thanks Louisa!). So we have a chance to do some trial runs at retting before our own crop is ready. We hope to learn how to do it successfully so we can pass the information on to all you grow-alongs.

The Urban Weavers at McLean field house didn't like the idea of the retting being done in the bath there as retting (AKA rotting) can be smelly, so the flooding problem at Aberthau has become a bonus feature.

Also, here's a picture of the antique fine grade hackle being scrutinised by the blacksmith from Burnaby Heritage Village and David Gowman (Legion of Flying Monkeys) to see how they can make us another one - but this time the coarse one we'll need for the first hackling.

Penny

Weeding your flax - now's a good time

Don't know about your flax, but ours is 10cm tall now, so we're going to take off our shoes and weed the plots.

 

It's important not to tread on the seedlings because they don't recover well from being knocked over - hence barefoot weeding. You only need to do this once, and since the weather will be sunny from Sunday for a few days, this is a good time.

 

You need to remove the weeds because they compete with the flax for light, water and soil nutrients, also it's much easier to harvest without weeds in the crop.

 

No rain means I can also bike or bus out to the Jericho plot and take some photos. I hear that Caitlin and Sharon have been working hard sowing the flax and planting the dye/food plant seedlings grown by the Park Board, so I can't wait to see it. I'll be taking along my pruning shears to tidy up the willow spinning wheel while I'm there. I'll post pictures of the plot next time.

 

Penny

 

Handspun and handwoven Eastern European linens on sale at Le Marche, Vancouver

If you want to eat at a great cafe and get a look at some great linens, you only need to go as far as 28th and St George. I was taken there by a friend this week.

Le Marche cafe has a collection of towels, tablecloths and tea towels for sale, all in natural flax colour or bleached. If you want to get a feel for what you can produce with your flax, this is the place to go - the food excellent too!

(photograph courtesy of Le Marche)

http://www.marchestgeorge.com/2011/08/linens.html

Penny

Urban Cloth Project website for all things linen in Vancouver

I've been having some problems with using this blogspot because of my refusal to acquiesce to Evil Google's terms for downloading Chrome.

Because of that I'm now posting all the Flax Project posts on wordpress too, at www.urbanclothproject.wordpress.com.

So if you want to see all the flax posts only, that's the place to go. It will also be where all the flax growing and processing information will go to when I take my leave and hand the project over to Caitlin and Sharon later this year, after harvest.

That process has already started. I turn 60 this year and have decided to take things more slowly. I don't have the energy I used to. Sharon and Caitlin have energy enough between them to power a small continent for a year. Wait until you read about the things they have planned on August 17th at the Aberthau flax and dye plant plot!

More about this in a later post..................

More about Sharon here: http://sharonkallis.com/
More about Caitlin here: http://www.wewilltellyouallofoursecrets.com/

Penny

Antique flax hackle, and don't forget to water your flax seeds in this sunny weather

The flax hackle arrived in the mail today, all the way from Texas.

Thanks to Jo Ann, for sending it.

These things are as rare as hen’s teeth since the only maker of them in North America has become ill. This one looks like a coarse hackle to me - not that I'm an expert), so we're still looking for a medium or fine one if anyone sees anything like this. If you do, let Urban Weaver know and we'll snap it up immediately.

It has hand forged spikes about 6cm long, and the hackle part is about 10 x 4cm. It's pretty heavy.

We're having some pretty dry weather, so don't forget to water your flax seeds.

 Mine are already germinating (I planted 13 days ago), so this is a vulnerable time for them.

Penny

New flax, old flax

The weather has been perfect for flax planting!

McLean Park, Means of Production garden, my plot and I hope the other grow-alongs are all now planted, the Aberthau flax will be sown in May. I have 7sq m of flax sown. Not enough for a shirt, but I'm hoping for a furoshiki and a vest.

While building a living willow sculpture of a spinning wheel as a memorial for a friend* (more on this later), one of the group of friends weaving told us she had a lot of 20 year old dried flax plants that she had grown herself, in her basement. She is happy to donate them to the Urban Weaver and we are delighted to have them.

This means we will be able to start doing some retting experiments to see what works best, in advance of our own crop being ready. I expect the bath in the field house will be the first place we'll try. Expect more posts on what we find out!

* The willow spinning wheel

A very good friend of mine - spinner, weaver, dyer (all that good stuff!), died this year. Neither Sharon (Kallis) or I can work out which of us had the idea for a willow sculpture memorial, but her husband invited 5 of her close friends and with Sharon's expert design and leadership we wove a willow spinning wheel together.

The wheel is made if living willow, so new growth will need to be woven in, or clipped. This shouldn't be a problem, as the area of stones you can see on the left of the picture is the site of the new 84sq m flax and dye bed that will be built next week at Aberthau. That means there will always be someone around tending to the flax or the dye plants.

Here's what a friend who lives abroad (another willow weaver/spinner/dyer) wrote about the memorial:

Masami's Wheel is a lovely willow sculpture and a very fine memorial. It is fine tribute to Masami and a credit to all of the folks who made it.

If the sculpture develops into a group of young willow trees, it will become less of a sculpture, but a more lasting memorial.

If the remnants of the sculpture are allowed to develop into mature trees, they will be a feature in the landscape for decades.  

If these trees are periodically pollarded, they could become "veteran trees" and might survive for centuries

I love the idea of a "floating" memorial.  Will it last until next month/year/decade/century?  Who knows? That is the beauty of it!

  

 
Myself, I love the idea that her wheel, and eventually the willows that it generates, will stand watch over the flax and dye bed for us.

Time to sow your flax!

Well folks, the time is here according to the long range forecast.


http://www.theweathernetwork.com/fourteenday/cabc0308

There's no frost forecast in the next couple of weeks, and the temperatures after Monday seem to be rising nicely, so the soil will have a chance to dry out and warm up.

Based on this information, I would say that sowing your flax sometime next week, towards the middle or end of the week. However, do check back at the forecast and make sure that there isn't any frost forecast. Sunny days mean no cloud cover at night so it can get cold enough for an overnight frost.

How to sow

You'll need to do a last weeding on your plot, then hoe the soil and rake it to a fine tilth, break down any small and large clods and remove stones.

For those of you with larger plots.

I recommend roughly dividing your seed in half and broadcasting it to get an even coverage. Start in one corner just throw the seed out in front of you in a sweeping motion. Walk forward a couple of step - repeat. Go to the opposite corner and broadcast the remaining seed in the same way. Now rake 1cm of soil over the seeds, and either walk evenly over the whole plot or firm the seeds in by tamping down with the flat head of the rake.

For those with small plots.

When your plot is weeded and raked, spread your seed evenly over the whole plot. Rake 1cm of soil over the seeds and tamp the soil down either by walking evenly over it, or tamping down with the flat head of the rake.

Don't feed the birds!

You'll need to protect your seed from birds, so I suggest some netting over the plot or string black thread across it for a week until the seedlings emerge.

And don't forget to water the seeds (if it isn't about to rain in the next few hours).

Please email and  let myself, Sharon or Caitlin (or the UW address) know what date you planted your flax. We'd like to know which dates turned out to be the most successful in producing a good crop, so we can be equally successful in the years to come!

Flax planting may be on for the last week of April - weather forecast

The 14 day weather forecast http://www.theweathernetwork.com/fourteenday/cabc0308?extcmp=sem_web_googleen_text&cities-en&gclid=CKH4l6qEzbYCFYF7QgodSUYAuQ shows the daily high crawling up slowly towards the end of the month, and no sign of frost.

However, as we can all feel, it's still pretty cold and the soil is even colder (and wet!) - go put your hands in some out there and you'll see what I mean. Seed sowed into that will just rot before germinating.

We'll need a good few warm and sunny days to heat the soil and dry it out some, but of course with the clearer weather comes clear nights and a high risk of overnight frost.

So I'll keep you posted, but I personally won't be planting any flax before the the last few days of the month based on this forecast.

Penny

A lesson on being a peasant (and growing more flax)

Today I visited the back yard of a rental property that I've been guerilla gardening for more than three years. The soil was manured, top dressed with bone meal, weeded, raked and ready to plant potatoes today. In my cold frame are climbing zucchini growing, ready to plant there in June.

I started this garden to use as a way to show young renters how their food is grown. One of them became a keen gardener and researched and traded recipes with me to use what was growing. At his behest, I planted the herb garden there.

The rhubarb I planted almost four years ago was sprouting last week, and the herb bed, currant bushes, raspberries and strawberries were looking good. I weeded the flower bed  I established for the residents (lysimachia was up, as was the montbretia), talked with one of them about when they'd be able to help themselves to potatoes this year and went home.

When I arrived this week, I found a builder had dumped sewage contaminated soil and rubble all over the garden, killing the strawberries, several herb plants and burying the rhubarb and flower bed. He said he 'didn't see' anything growing there That means the residents (and myself) won't be able to have any vegetables this year and the fruit on the bushes will be too risky to eat.

So to rescue a bad situation, I'm going to put the whole area down to flax. That's about 5 times the amount I had intended to grow, but I can't see a better alternative. More linen for me this year!

It occurs to me that this is the type of situation that landless peasants face regularly. Random acts by landlords, willfull or ignorant destruction, our increasing number of extreme weather events caused by climate change, can mean they totally lose their food supply.

Luckily, I have a vegetable garden of my own at home and though the loss of all my hard work made me sit down amid the builder's rubble and cry, I shall continue to eat very well.  Meanwile rich countries are buying up land in Third World countries and turfing off the traditional farmers http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/apr/27/international-land-deals-database-africa.

Please read the link. Canada is in the top 10 list of countries displacing peasant farmers to get ownership of foreign land http://landportal.info/landmatrix/get-the-idea?img=top-10-investor-countries. This is being done by our government with our complicity. Let's not say we 'didn't see' what was going on.

Penny

Flax, terroir, homogeneity and globalisation

Someone who visited the Urban Weaver one evening, described a locally sourced fibre and dye sweater as having 'terroir'.

'Terroir', roughly translated and taken away from its use in describing wine, means 'of the place' or 'of the land'. She explained that she meant the mixture of localy sourced fibres, dyed using plants from Stanley Park made the garment uniquely 'of the land' where it came from and was being worn.

The availability of cheap oil and its evil spawn, globalisation, has meant the regionality that used to define our communities and places, no longer exists. It has made available to us the riches and rarities of the world's far flung places that were once only the priviledge of the wealthiest. How many suits did your great grandfather own? Unless he was rich, probably only one or two, because sourcing the fibre/fabric/labour to make them was expensive. Now we buy and throw away cheap cashmere sweaters with abandon, in willful ignorance of hard work and raw conditions it takes to raise, process and make that luxury fibre.

Now that we can have the things that were once only for the rich (*alert: We are the rich. According to the UN we are the 12th richest country out of 193 of the world. The country producing cashmere is 163rd, and the one processing it is 93rd) nothing is special anymore. We rich countries can source anything we want. Result? We all dress in the same stuff, and find ourselves very boring to look at.

We must find ourselves boring to look at because we waste even more oil travelling to poor countries to look at their regional dress. They take pride in wearing clothes that distinguish them from other countries, even from other villages. We on this continent just wear the same stuff that we all source from a handful of big box retailers. We  have no regional dress, no regional pride in our clothing. Our clothing has no terroir. We look uniformly boring.

You can reclaim that regionality and produce unique clothing by growing and processing local flax. The Urban Weaver has everything you need to do that for free. We have seed for you, will soon have the equipment for you to process it into flax, and will teach you to spin, weave and dye it. The oil use will be tiny, the carbon footprint (unless you drive to the field house) small, and no one will have been exploited in the production of your clothing.

There's still a few weeks to join in. Why not exert your uniqueness and regional pride - your terroir?

Penny

Drug dealers help out the flax project

The flax seed has been weighed out for all the various plots that will be growing around the city.

Sounds like and easy thing to do, but at a sowing rate of 12-14g per sq. m., weighing out 13g packets of seed for the smaller plots was hard. None of us had a kitchen scale that could accurately measure such small amounts, and the consequences of being 5g out in the weighing would mean a 1 sq.m. plot that was either 50% too dense (so the flax grows too tall and falls over) or 50% too sparse (so the flax grows side branches and the fibre is no good).

I won't tell you who among us went to a marijuana supplier to borrow their very accurate scale for a few hours, but it was perfect for the job.

FYI, the following places will be growing flax this year:

Science World
Means of Production Garden
Capillano College
McLean Park
Aberthau Community Centre

and 6 local gardeners.

The Aberthau plot is the largest at 84 sq.m, but only a third of that will be flax this year. The other two-thirds will be down to dye plants or vegetables that produce dye as part of a 4 year crop rotation. The smallest plot, about 0.5sq.m.) will be on Pender St, near International Village.

Penny

PS Sowing won't happen for a few more weeks yet as there's still a high risk of frost and the soil isn't warm enough yet.

Flax to furoshiki!

At last, after many months of trials and sampling, I’ve finally found a way that even the more beginning of beginner can make cloth from their flax.

The standard Urban Weaver chopstick/toy wheel spindle spins flax very well. It only takes a very short while to make enough thread to make a 4cm square on a home made pin loom.

I’ll post up the details of where on the internet to find a jig and instructions for these lovely little looms later.
Once you have completed your square and taken it off the loom, put it into dilute bleach for a few minutes.

When it's gone paler, rinse it and dye it!

Here’s my dyes out in the sun this weekend. Takes a day to dye a square. I used blackberry juice from berries I canned last year, ditto cherry juice, onion skins, dried weld leaves, tansy and safflower.






Then just rinse your squares again, iron them and sew them together. That's the cloth you can see in the top picture.

And in case you think it isn’t possible to produce a big article of clothing this way, here’s a shawl I spun, wove, dyed, sewed together. It’s made of all local fibres from angora rabbit, to bison fibre (from the bison meat guy at the Terminal Ave farmer’s market) and ‘chiengora’ (malamut cross hair from the dog pound). The dyes are all from local plants too (apart from two dark blue indigo squares).

Flax and linen day at Joybilee Farm, Greenwood, August 10th

If you’re planning a trip this August but haven’t decided where to go, you might consider going to Greenwood, BC for Joybilee Farm’s annual flax day http://kettleriverartsfestival.com/events/joybilee-farm-linen-festival/.

You get a chance to see them processing last year’s flax crop, see this year's flax fields http://joybileefarm.com/about-joybilee-farm/linen-demonstration-garden/, spin some flax, make pine needle baskets with waxed linen thread and look at some of the lovely linen clothing grown and made in Grand Forks by the Doukhobor community. The historians from the Boundary museum (well worth a visit if you get time), will also be at Joybilee talking about the history of flax growing in the area.
For those living sustainably , there is a Greyhound bus from Terminal Avenue Greyhound Station, leaving at 6.30 am, that gets to Greenwood at 3.40pm. There is a daily bus from Greenwood at 9.10 am that goes straight past Joybilee farm, but appears to stop 6.4km past the farm entrance. I did ask Joybilee if they had any more information about the bus and where it stops, but they tell me they've no idea as they never use it.

Or you could try this - about 10km short of Greenwood, is Mile 0 on the Kettle Valley Railway Trail. This is the jumping off point to take the trail to see the rebuilt Myra Canyon trestles. So if you’re coming by bus, bring your bike along, bike the trail to see the trestles. The next day you can take the Greyhound on from Midway to Greenwood and bike the 7.8km from there to the farm.

Penny

American measurements and flax seed planting.

Just organising myself to weigh out the Elektra seed for people who are doing a grow-along - don't get enthusiastic for planting though, as the soil isn't warm enough for sowing yet!


Biolin, being the good Canadians they are sell their seed by the Kg and give planting rates as 12g per square metre. Everyone who is doing a grow along seems to measure their plot in feet. Why is that?

Is that because we actually think 12 inches = 1 foot, 5280 feet = 1 mile is easier than our own metric system?

How come we measure the temperature in the garden in degrees Centigrade, but the temperature in our ovens in degrees Farenheit?

Is it because we're increasingly becoming American in our ways?

Do we really want to be one with the only country on the planet still using a system based on the arm length of Henry I a thousand years ago?

How come we measure the distances on our roads in Km and the distances in our gardens in feet?

Do we carry the conversion rates in our heads to make sense of it all? Clearly not, as American rocket scientists caused the crash of the 2009 Mars Orbiter by their inability to convert from the metric units that all the other collaborating countries were using.

For those of you who don't, the conversion is divide the square feet measurement by 10.764 to get square metres.

Seed will be weighed out at the beginning of April (at the rate of 12g per sq m). Watch this blog to see when you can collect it from the field house. I'll leave the labelled bags in there, in a mouse proof container.

Penny

Urban Cloth Project a.k.a. The Flax Project

The ground preparation on two new flax plots

The flax plot at Means of Production garden is now dug, weeded, and bone meal added for phosphate, ready for planting thanks to hard work by Sharon, Caitlin and Arlen.

There is a medium size tree in the SE corner, but we're hoping it won't shade the crop and result in poor fibre production.

If any grow-along folks haven't yet prepared the soil for planting you need to get to it. If the weather stays this mild, we may be into seed sowing by next month.

The plot at McLean Park has been double dug and bone meal put on the soil. Many thanks to Sharon, David, Martin and especially Cindy, the McLean Park gardener.

Sadly, the soil is full of stones, not very deep and on top of a clay pan, so it's going to need a layer of compost of some kind and extra soil to make it viable. We're hoping the park Board will deliver a load of soil and some leaf mulch to give some organic matter to the soil and make a decent seed bed for flax seed germination.

This plot will be shaded by several trees, so we will have to see how this affects the flax. Flax should be grown where there is full sun.

It's also going to be hard to stop the many off-leash dogs that are brought to this park from flattening the seedlings or lodging the flax plants. It will need a good fence around it. For now, until the soil and leaf mulch are delivered, yellow tape will have to suffice.




We have finally decided on a name for the project - The Urban Cloth Project. This takes into account the work that Urban Weaver has already done on the possibility of using invasive species like broom for cloth, the 'chiengora' from the grooming of the finer coated dogs in the local pound, and urban yarn harvesting. The latter is buying machine made sweaters from charity stores, unravelling them, plying the yarn and either reknitting or weaving with it to make new garments.

Penny