A Perennial Reveal

Those following my blog may recall that the University of Minnesota Horticultural Research folks visited Gale Woods Farm a couple of months ago to see the linen flax crop. They gave me a few bundles of their perennial flax, which they had retted, to try to process mechanically. I finally got around to doing that, and here is the result:

I first tried to break the flax with my flax brake and found the stalks as hard as steel! To me, that indicated that either the perennial flax needed more retting or the stalks would need another method of breaking. I leaned toward requiring a longer retting than the 1–2 weeks that the University had already done. 

So, I put one bundle into my puppy pool to soak a bit longer. I don't have photos of the flax in the pool—it was rather unexciting, to be honest, since there was no obvious biological action happening—at least the bubbling you typically see with retting flax was very minor. The weather was warm (mostly 80 degrees), but my yard had limited sun, so it was not as ideal as the Gale Woods greenhouse. Nevertheless, after 11 days, I finally saw some release in the fiber strands as I bent the stalks. It was time to pull the stalks, rinse them, and let them dry as a re-test of the mechanical processing!

I took a small handful of stalks to break since they were still very stiff and did not easily break in the brake. (I don't know why brakes are not spelled "break" since that is what the equipment does, but that's the nomenclature for that piece of equipment!)

The stalks were finally breakable! There are certainly differences between the linen variety of flax grown at Gale Woods Farm and this perennial variety grown for seed and straw use. Besides the length of the stalks (this variety of perennial flax is about a foot shorter than the linen flax), there is obviously something different about the cellular structure between the varieties. I observed that the boon (woody matter of the stem) of the perennial variety hangs onto the fiber strands much more tightly than it did in the linen flax variety.  

I was able to break enough fiber to scutch and hackle. Above is what the stalks looked like after breaking. 

There is a substantial amount of boon to scrape off after breaking—more than with the linen variety of flax!

Success! After putting the broken and scutched (scraped) fiber through three grades of hackles (coarse to fine), I ended up with a small bundle of short but spinnable fibers. They are a bit coarse, although they can be spun with a tow-spinning method. (That comment is for all of you flax spinners. You will know what I mean!)

My conclusion is that, yes, you can grow perennial flax for its fiber content. Although it takes longer to ret and mechanically process, you can get some short, spinnable fibers. It won't create fine linen thread, though. I plan to try spinning this into a wool/linen blend yarn, which is more suited to a shorter fiber preparation called "woolsey," also called "linsey-woolsey!"

Now, I'm going back to spinning some of the Gale Woods linen flax, so I have samples of that for the Fall Fest at Gale Woods Farm on October 13th! I hope to see you there!

One, Two, Three, Four – Ret!

To recap, the Gale Woods Farm linen flax retting process began on Friday, September 6. The following days were very active, and I waited to post about what had been happening until I could gather everything into one post. So here goes…

Putting on My Citizen Scientist Cap 

I closely recorded the subsequent retting activity by recording temperatures and visually/physically inspecting the retting stalks daily. Here are the results:

DAY ONE

Saturday, September 7, 2024, 1 PM (this was 24 hours after the stalks were put in the vats)

Air temperature: 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

Greenhouse temperature: 96 degrees Fahrenheit.

I did not test the vat temperature that day, but both vats had significant biological action (bubbling). Look at the video below to see how active the bubbles are!

DAY TWO

Sunday, September 8, 2024, 12:15 PM

Air temperature: 69 degrees Fahrenheit.

Greenhouse temperature: 96 degrees Fahrenheit.

Vat temperatures: 82 degrees Fahrenheit.

The vats are still actively bubbling and have a skim of what looks like an oily biological material.

I drained about half the water out of the vats and refilled them. I also opened the greenhouse walls for more ventilation since the weather forecast was for higher temperatures and direct sun for the next two days. 

DAY THREE

Monday, September 9, 2024, 3 PM

Air temperature: 79 degrees Fahrenheit.

Greenhouse temperature: 98 degrees Fahrenheit.

Vat temperatures: 88 degrees Fahrenheit.

The stalks are getting closer to being retted. Some of the surfaces of the stalks are starting to rub loose, although the stalks are still not breaking easily.

DAY FOUR

Tuesday, September 10, 2024, 3 PM

Air temperature: 76 degrees Fahrenheit.

Greenhouse temperature: 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Vat temperatures: 88 degrees Fahrenheit.

(Out of curiosity, I tested the vats for their pH numbers to be sure they were holding a more acidic nature. The farm water tested at 8, which is slightly alkaline. The vats tested at 6, which is slightly acidic and close to the goal of 5.5. That was good news!)

 

I pulled out some stalks, and they showed signs of being retted (see the video below). When retted, the linen fibers pull loose from the stalk, and the woody matter (the "boon") drops off. The fibers we want to make linen thread are the thin ones you see in the video.

As a precaution, I pulled out a few more stalks to dry in the greenhouse overnight to test for their breakage the following day. To not over-ret the stalks in the vats, I drained the vats and let the stalks rest in the emptied vats just in case I needed to refill them in the morning to continue the retting process. (When the water is removed, the anaerobic bacteria dies, and the retting action stops. But when water is added again, the retting action continues.)

The Morning of Wednesday, September 11, 2024

To avoid hauling my flax brake to the farm, I used a rolling pin to test-break the dried stalks. I excitedly found that they were well-retted and ready to dry! 

I gently rinsed the stalks that had been resting overnight in the vats and laid them out to dry on the greenhouse racks.

The biological processing is done!

The next day, I checked on the drying flax stalks and found a monarch butterfly flittering along the flax in the greenhouse, perhaps enjoying the residue from the biological processing!

Oh, but wait,… the crop was not entirely done! 

There were still 60 bundles of the flax crop that were saved for seed remaining to ret! 

The farm staff tried to ripple (take off) the seeds of those stalks, although most of the seeds had fallen out of the capsules by the time they pulled them off the fence where they were drying. The conclusion was that drying stalks on a fence line to save for seed was not optimal. Either the stalks should have been left longer in the field to dry upright (although, due to bad weather, that couldn’t happen this year) or risk a lower seed yield and harvest and ripple all the seeds when the stalks were ready to be pulled for linen. The general conclusion was to, in the future, ripple all of them during the linen stalk harvest since the first rippling provided many viable seeds.

 

The staff put these last bundles in a single vat on Friday, September 13. What followed was a very warm weekend, so I visited the vat the next day to drain it halfway and refill it.

I didn’t bring my vat thermometer, although the vat was in an active bubbling state, and the stalks were not fully retted. Based on the experience of the previous vats, I took a chance that the stalks would not be retted in two days, so I didn’t check the vat the next day.

 

Monday, September 16, 2024, Noon

The last batch of stalks was fully retted! This was only three days into the vat soaking! But since the greenhouse temperature was quite warm during this period, in the lower nineties, I suspect the vat had moved along faster. I drained the vat, rinsed the stalks, and laid them out to dry. 

Some of the stalks in this last batch still had a green hue. That is a mystery. How could they still contain chlorophyll after all this time? I visited the farm a couple of days later when the flax was nearly fully dry, and the green hue had almost completely disappeared.

 

NOW, finally, the biological processing step is DONE for the entire crop! 

What an experience this has been! After all this dedicated care and time, it feels so great to have a successful crop. 

I want to acknowledge the Gale Woods Farm garden team for all their support this summer. A crop of this size needed a village to make it happen. My heartfelt thank you goes to Katie, Lydia, Lexied, Cat, Nadine, and especially Greg, the garden supervisor.

 

So, what’s next? 

I will mechanically process a few flax bundles before the farm’s Fall Fest, a public-invited, free event at Gale Woods Farm, on October 13. There, I plan to show examples of processed flax, from the stalk and biologically and mechanically processed fiber, to spun fiber. If my time permits, I may also have a woven linen piece from the handspun flax. I'll also demonstrate the mechanical processing steps during the event, so come and see that for yourself! Here’s a link to more Fall Fest information: https://www.threeriversparks.org/fallfest

 

If you can’t attend the event, return here to see the mechanical processing steps, which I will post next.

I plan to keep this Summer of Linen Flax thread alive, at least through the next month or so and will see what the future holds for additional discoveries to share in this adventure with linen flax. Thanks for coming along with me this summer!

 

 

 

 It Works! She lives!

What you see here resting on my outdoor worktable is a prototype of a fully functioning tabletop Flax Brake! I am thrilled! This will now serve as my working (yay!) guide for making the final maple brake for the American Swedish Institute Teaching Tools Grant I received early this summer.

Check out the product of the first test—properly broken flax stalks!

I plan to cut the maple wood for the final brake at my husband's friend's workshop sometime in the next month and do my magic to create a fully functioning, gorgeous maple flax brake that will serve my students—and me for flax processing demonstrations—for years to come.

It's built to last. I chose to use screws rather than dowels for the construction since wooden dowels tend to shrink and expand with the changing seasons, which erratically loosens and tightens connections. I also decided to use a strong metal piano hinge for the pivot rather than a large dowel because the weakest point in both of my vintage brakes has been the wooden pivot dowel. This brake should stand the test of time—and the use of many hands!

Hackle News

I just learned that the three hackles, which are the other tools I requested in my grant application, are coming in from the UK next week. (A site in the UK was the only place I located that still makes a properly graduated set of three flax hackles.) I'll post the news and photos when I have the hackles in hand.

Flax News

Sorry. Nothing new to share on the flax plant front. They are still growing, albeit slowly, in the pots, but a few stalks are starting to yellow. Their growing season should be ending soon, with drying and harvesting to follow. Perhaps I'll have more to share about the plants in my next post.

Growth with the Project—in more ways than one!

It's been a few weeks since my last post, but this lapse has only been due to being too busy to post. The accident I had nearly a month ago also kept me from working on the prototype for a couple of weeks. But since then, I've been in mad creation mode! 

Each piece is connected by wood screws 

in an attempt to make a really strong flax brake 

that will stay strong in all seasons (to avoid the 

seasonal shrinking and expanding of typical wood 

dowel connections) and to withstand heavy use by students.

The prototype is nearly finished! Last Sunday, 7/31/22 (my goal date for having the prototype done—I nearly met that date and would have if not for my accident), I screwed together all sections to test the general fit. 

Here's the built prototype sitting in front of its purpose, the flax,

before pulling the brake completely apart to cut the blades.

On Monday, 8/1/22, I was in a friend's woodworking shop to create the blades' angled cuts. Of course, I forgot to take photos of the action in the workshop. Perhaps I'll remember photos when cutting the final maple brake. Nevertheless, here's a photo of what the angled blades look like from a side perspective:

I still need to soften the wood edges at the top of the blade angles

to allow the blades to break the flax without cutting it.

Now, an update on the flax growing experiment…

The flax has not grown substantially in height during the past few weeks.

The average flax stalk height is now 24 inches. The smaller black pots

are still lagging behind, with some being pretty short and stagnant in their growth.

It's possible the stalks may grow taller in the next month since they can reach 3 to 4 feet tall in perfect growing conditions (a field with full sun). The challenge here is they are growing in pots, which is perhaps not ideal, and the adjacent tomato plants have also been taking over their direct sun. Today, I moved the flax to a more ideal location away from the tomatoes, so now there is less competition with the sun. I'll see if that makes a difference in their future growth. There have been a few more flowers, although they have not been prolific. Perhaps that means there is more growth to come!

Hello Little Blossom!

Two flax flower blossoms emerged on 7/13/22!

This was a surprise for me this morning. I expected the stalks to grow for at least a couple more weeks before blooming. But we are about on track for the bloom time, mid-May to mid-July. I just thought/hoped they would grow taller before blooming. So, apparently, the pots have created shorter flax stalks, now running about 23 inches tall rather than the 36 inches or more they would reach in a field. It will be interesting to see if they continue to grow taller, even while in the blooming stage.

More on the flax brake project for the ASI Teaching Tools Grant…

I intended to get my pine prototype of the tabletop flax brake in good shape last weekend. That intention went by the wayside when I had an accident while walking my dog last Saturday morning. That has put my physical life on a hiatus for a bit while I recover from lacerations and bruises that occurred from a face and body slam into an asphalt road. I hope to start back into the prototype work this weekend, body willing.

'Tis Wise to Prototype!

I usually jump into a project with both feet—let the chips fall where they may! But in the case of the ASI Teaching Tools Grant, I thought it best to be cautious with the precious maple lumber that I have in my possession and purchased under the grant money. So, on my dime, I purchased an equal amount of pine lumber to use to create a prototype of my self-designed tabletop flax brake. 

Today, the work of cutting the lumber to size began! (Actually, it started a few days ago, but since then, I re-evaluated my measurements and decided to cut the pieces a bit smaller.)

The first cut is the scariest, 

to misquote the lyrics of Sheryl Crow.

Measure twice...

I am using an old miter saw that leaves some shards in the cuts, redeemable with good sanding paper.

The cuts are done!

This weekend, I will move on to making a space in my basement to test the special cuts needed to hold the brake's bottom blades and test out the best drill hole size and drilling technique for the screws. Fortunately, I have a drill press to make those tricky holes, some of which will need to go through a narrow width of lumber without cracking.

And back outdoors, the flax continues to grow in pots…

The tallest stalks are up to 20 inches now!

The flax plants seeded in the black pots just a week after the first flax crop continue to do poorly. They are only 6 inches at their tallest. At this point, the chance of those stalks catching up to the flax growing in the clay-colored pots is slim.

Pretty pathetic-looking plants!