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!

 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.