Where Does the Time Go? The Harvest is Done! 

Apparently, time doesn’t go into updating the blog since I have a major catch-up to do here. The past two months have been overwhelmingly packed with activities and some health stuff I’ve been dealing with. The harvest wasn’t going to wait for me to recover, so I broke down my Viking resolve to do it all by myself and accepted help. (Once again, I am finding out that growing flax can become a personal learning journey on many levels!)

Gale Woods Farm Plot

This crop has been an odd one. The flowering continued way beyond the expected timeline. 

Harvesting is typically expected at 90 to 100 days post-emergence and 30 days after the final massive flower bloom, but with flowers still coming and the stalks still relatively green, I pushed the harvest to 105 days. In the end, this later harvest may affect stalk quality. They may be coarser when processed and perhaps ret faster than expected. My assumptions are based on research I’ve read on harvest timing, but the reality of the crop quality remains to be seen. 

We harvested a total of 158 bundles, with July 29^th as the final day of pulling the stalks. We hung them upside down on the garden fence (seed capsules facing down, which helps the seeds mature more fully) and left them to dry until August 12^th, when we took them down, 

moved them to the greenhouse, and removed the seed capsules (rippled the seeds). 

Summer garden staff, Kaela and Adrik, were my main garden helpers through this entire Gale Woods Farm journey. (A shout-out to Greg, the farm manager, and Hema, a summer intern, too!) Here, Kaela and Adrik are rippling the seed capsules off the stalks.

The final seed weight was 5.5 pounds, with many mature seeds, so it looks like we will have a healthy number of seeds for next year’s crop!

A week later, on August 20^th, we began the retting process. 

The ret tanks are filled with plain well water, and anaerobic bacteria will eventually start rotting away the woody stems.

The entire crop fit into two stock tanks! I will monitor the tanks throughout the next week and test the stalks periodically to determine when they have retted enough to release the fibers when processed, but not so much that they destroy the fiber line. It’s a skill learned and relearned each year, and it always feels like a guessing game!

My Personal Plot at Riverbend Farm

This crop seemed to be more “normal” in that the stalks did not have the same extended flowering that the Gale Woods plot had. Yes, some stalks were still flowering when the harvest date arrived, July 24^th, but overall, the stalk appearance was more in line with what is normally seen: about ¼ of the stalk yellowing and stalks holding a majority of brown seed capsules with seeds rattling around inside.

I had such a wonderful group of helpers at Riverbend, 11 in total, all thanks to Greg and Mary and their dedicated gardening friends who were excited to learn about this unique textile plant!  

An empty plot!

We harvested the crop in two hours! The harvest size was similar to Gale Woods, although these stalks were longer overall. I attribute that to a different soil type (more sandy/loamy than at Gale Woods) and the old “who knows” factor!

The entire crop filled my 17-year-old Rav4 (I love this car!). 

After hauling the stalks home, some of my family and I hung them on our backyard fence to dry. 

On August 14^th, we moved the stalks into our garage to ripple later, when I have more time to devote to the task—probably sometime in the next one to two weeks. 

Flax stalks can be stored indefinitely, either before or after rippling the seed capsules. It is best to remove the capsules fairly soon, though, to avoid critters finding the delicious seeds before you can gather and store them for next year’s crop! (The seeds are viable for about 5 years with careful storage, although they lose some viability each year.)

Come back here later to see the next steps: the continued flax retting at Gale Woods Farm and my personal capsule rippling adventure!