The Flax Vat Ret Has Begun!

Today, Friday, September 6, we began retting the Gale Woods linen flax. This is precisely four weeks after we harvested the flax and two weeks after we rippled it (removed the seed capsules). The stalks were a beautiful light brown, and most no longer had the green tint mentioned in my last blog.

 

We started with three vats but realized only two would be needed, so we moved flax from the smallest vat to the two larger ones. (The flax doesn’t need to be free-floating in the vats; it just needs to be fully submerged, and two vats were enough for that.)

 

When filling the vats with the stalks, the flax must be placed with the root ends together and in alignment. This is important for the remaining processing steps.

Large pavement blocks were placed on top of the flax in the vats, but we found that additional weights were needed to fully submerge the stalks. A few field rocks did the trick!

The temperature in the greenhouse was 70 degrees when we started the process (the "live" reading is on the right in the photo). The water was cooler, maybe 50–60 degrees, but it will warm up quickly as the sun hits the greenhouse and the ambient temperature increases. The weather temperature is supposed to be in the 80s during the next week, so I expect the ret to move along quickly. I will be monitoring the vats every day, draining some of the water as the anaerobic bacteria (bacteria that thrives in water) does its work (the bacteria make the water bubble and smell awful!), and photographing the progress up to the point of the flax being well-retted. 

My next post will show the retting results, so keep in touch!