The Heat is ON!

This will be a shorter blog, but it's not bad news. 

Our weather has been brutally hot and stormy recently. The heat made me concerned that the flax stalks would keel over or mature too rapidly. They prefer the cooler temperatures of more temperate climates. But they also like wet conditions, and they've had that in spades this summer, which might be their saving grace.

Gale Woods Farm plot

You can see that the capsules now outnumber the flowers.

The stalks at Gale Woods Farm are doing very well! I visited them this morning and could still see flowers. Here I thought the stalks were going to be toast, or at least be completely spent of blooms. Nope! But there are more capsules now than flowers. (Capsules are the compartments left behind after the flowers drop off, and are where the seeds are maturing.)

There was an interloper along the plot! Some sort of squash plant! It was trying to hang onto the flax stalks, but I pulled it back as best I could. 

I expect the harvest date will be sometime towards the end of July if all progresses as usual. The stalks need to be about 2/3 yellow from their base, and the capsules should be leaning toward brown if not fully brown. Typically, the stalks are ready for harvest 30 days after the full plot bloom and 90 to 100 days after their emergence. We are at roughly day 70 right now. The temperatures are forecast to be in the 80s and 90s (26-32+ Celsius) for the next week or so. I'll periodically check the stalks and cross my fingers that they can withstand such heat! 

Bees and other pollinators were still busy finding pollen in the remaining blooms!

Bees continue to visit the flowers. Turn up the audio to hear the buzz on this video!

I wonder if the fiber that is gleaned from these tough plants will be coarser than preferred. When it comes to nature, it's best not to have expectations, but speculation is always in play.

Riverbend Farm (my personal) plot

Last Friday, I visited my personal plot. As has been the case all along, since being sown a few days after the Gale Woods Farm crop, the maturity rate is a few days later than that of Gale Woods Farm. 

Many stalks at the Riverbend plot are over 36 inches tall!

I ended up getting out to the farm late in the morning, so the blooms were actively dropping off the stalks.

Aren't the petals so pretty!

It was a gorgeous midsummer day for communing with the flax stalks!

Time Your Visit to See Blooms!

This is a reminder to anyone who wants to visit the Gale Woods Farm stalks to see flowers… Go in the morning! Mid-morning is best if you want to catch the flowers in bloom! If you visit in the afternoon, you won't get much of a flower show! And visit soon! They are coming to the end of their bloom cycle!

What the Heck?! We are in bloom! 

I was so shocked to see a blue hue in the field when I visited the Gale Woods Farm flax on June 10th! That was two weeks earlier than I expected. Although when I count up the days since sowing, it is on time—about 60 days. 

The Gale Woods Farm plot on June 10th—beginning to bloom!

The stalk height on June 10th.

The stalks are shorter than I thought they would be. They range from 24 to 31 inches. However, when looking at the expected height of the Avian variety, it is within the typical range. The shorter ones may catch up to the others, provided the shorter stalks aren't already in bloom (blooming is when the growth stage ends). Nevertheless, we may end up with a range of heights this year. Will see!

Can you see the blue hue in the distance—in the upper center of the photo? 

This was the view of the flax plot on June 18th, looking from the farm's entrance road.

I went back out to visit the stalks on June 18th, and they are still in a healthy bloom state, with more to come! So folks, get out to Gale Woods Farm within the next couple of weeks to catch the remaining blooms! (Gale Woods is a Three Rivers Park District park in Minnetrista, Minnesota.)

The plot is starting to sparkle with blooms on June 18th! Happy midsummer blooms!

If you can't get out to visit the blooms in person, here's a video to give you a taste of being in the field:

My personal plot is also in bloom!

As has been true throughout this growing season, my personal plot at Riverbend Farm, planted a few days after the Gale Woods plot, began blooming around June 12th.

My Riverbend Farm plot on June 12th.

It's a little hard to see the blooms because the wind was really kicking up and bending the stalks. They were getting a workout, but the petals still hung on until early afternoon.

Can you see the blue petals on the ground? Such delicate beauties!

My Riverbend Farm stalks have a more consistent height than the Gale Woods Farm stalks. 

On June 12th, they averaged 32 inches. Why are they more consistent? Perhaps the seeds were more viable, the soil type more amenable, the moisture more steady, and the sun more direct. Who knows?

The Growth Continues

…updating the progress of the Gale Woods Farm and my personal flax plots.

Gale Woods Farm

On May 28th, I weeded the plot for the third, and, hopefully, final time. The weeds were few, although it still took an hour to go through the rows.

The Gale Woods stalk height was about 10 inches on May 28th. 

This should be the last major weeding, since from this point on the stalks should start to snuff out any major weeds in the rows. (Weeds will continue to grow between the rows, but even they should become fewer as the stalks grow, and not affect the success of the stalk growth in the rows.)

The Gale Woods plot is looking good 43 days after sowing!

Some stalks are shorter than others, and that is most likely because their depth at sowing was a little deeper. Other factors may be involved; nevertheless, I've found that the shorter stalks tend to keep up with the taller ones as summer moves on. (Some linen flax growers separate shorter stalks from the longer ones when harvesting, but I find that is a fussy task and not really necessary. The ultimate stalk length is usually within an acceptable range and yields no significant problem in the final fiber result.)

An overhead view of the rows.

The shadows were showing a rough depiction of an American flag!

The Gale Woods flax rows on June 2nd—48 days after sowing.

I went back out to the field on June 2nd. The weeding was inconsequential. Yay! With only the occasional pulling of thistles as the summer goes on, the weeding is DONE! The height of the tallest stalks had grown to 21 inches—a doubling of height in just six days! Exciting! 

I had to hold up the tallest stalks to measure them, since the wind had bent the tall ends.

On this same day, we had a few visitors to the plot. They included two weaving students who had just graduated from the Sätergläntan folk school in Sweden and were in town to see various fiber-related venues. The education coordinator at the American Swedish Institute (one of my teaching locations) thought they would enjoy seeing the farm plot, so she, the two students, and a fellow teacher at ASI arrived for a tour of the plot and the farm. It was a beautiful day! Other farm staff and a farm fiber volunteer joined us, making a convivial group of linen enthusiasts as we shared knowledge of linen flax between countries.

The Swedish weavers are on the left side of the image; Shai is wearing a red cap, and Malin is wearing black shorts.

Catching Up on My Personal Plot

On May 23rd, I weeded my personal "Riverbend plot" for the second time. 

The stalk height averaged 3.5 inches, slightly shorter than that of the Gale Woods plot during the same week. That was expected due to the later sowing date. 

Oh, the grasses are the bane of my existence out there! But I did quite a clean weeding of the rows, even though the field was SO muddy and the weeds were holding tight in the soggy soil. Exhausting work!

A worm "friend" joined me during the muddy weeding!

The rows at Riverbend on May 23rd, after a good weeding, 35 days after sowing.

I returned to the field on May 30th for the third weeding. The stalks have grown! They are now averaging a foot tall. 

The stalks were a foot tall on May 30th – a gain of 8.5 inches after only 7 days! That's an increase of over an inch a day!

This was a tougher weeding day, with warmer weather, more sun—and I hope my last deep weeding. The flax really likes the organic soil at Greg's place, and so do the weeds and grasses! This was a three-hour-plus weeding session! That's about an hour longer than previous weedings. I plan to go out again this weekend and hope the weeding effort will have lessened as the flax stalks have grown taller. Honestly, the weeding is starting to feel physically taxing as the days get warmer. With June beginning, the weather will undoubtedly continue to become warmer. Another reason to sow those flax seeds as early as possible, as we were able to do this year!

The Riverbend flax rows on May 30th—42 days after sowing.

The rainy weather of the previous week has been a benefit, although a few days had passed since the last good amount of rain and the field was starting to dry out. So at the end of my weeding session, I lightly watered the stalks. More rain is expected at the end of this week, which will be good timing for those growing stalks!

Crossing Fingers

This spring has proven to be a very cold one. I am hoping that linen flax has the stamina of the woodland ephemerals, which are holding their own in my back woods, even with nighttime temperatures in the near-to-freezing level. Linen flax seedlings are known to be able to handle a frost, and even a freeze, although only for a short amount of time (a few hours).

 The Gale Woods Farm linen flax seedlings on April 28th.

 A closer look at the Gale Woods Farm linen flax seedlings five days later—May 2nd.

Gale Woods Farm Plot

The Gale Woods Farm crop has seen temperatures that produce a frost overnight. The first night of these temperatures seemed to not affect the little seedlings that began to emerge on April 28^th, 12 days after sowing. The emergence has been slow (7–10 days is typical), which makes me think the colder evenings and days are playing a factor in their growth pace. They are smart little seedlings! Even five days later, they are still at about the same height. That's OK. Take your time little seedlings! Warmer days and nights are coming!

Riverbend Farm Plot

The crop at Greg’s Riverbend Farm, which, as my previous post described, was planted later, and started to emerge around the first of May—again, 12 days after sowing. I haven’t gone out to Greg's place yet to note the progress. I truly hope it is making a very slow emergence since there have been some quite low temperatures in his location, and a slow emergence should protect the seedlings from freeze damage. I say this with hope in my eyes. Perhaps the false hope that farmers feel when there might be a real danger of a crop failure. For me, a crop failure will affect my ability to use my own flax stalks for teaching and demonstrations. That’s not as problematic as a linen crop failure in past centuries, where a crop failure meant a survival issue—both economically and physically—but I will personally feel the loss! Crossing fingers I can still rely on the Bloodroot plant to tell me when true spring has begun in this area! (see my previous post) Don't fail me now, Bloodroot!

If the seedlings make it through this difficult time, we will also need more rain. It is already terribly dry in the fields! Oh, this is a real-life example of the challenges and joys of what it means to live around the whims of nature!

A Final Update! 

2025 Gale Woods Farm Linen Flax Crop

A month sure passes quickly! To update you on the goings on of the past month… 

About two weeks after the harvest, the flax stalks were removed from the fence where they had been hanging to dry. The periodic rains we were receiving were stunting the dry time, so it made more sense to put the stalks under cover in the farm greenhouse to further dry. 

The stalks were finally dry by September 23rd, so on the 24th, I used a garden rake to ripple (remove) the seed capsules from the stalks. 

There were fewer seeds in each capsule than we had from last year's crop. We are pondering why this is the case. There are a few possible reasons. My strongest leaning is that the late sowing forced the stalks to grow too rapidly in the heat of the summer, and that stunted the seed production in the capsules. Linen flax likes to be sown no later than the middle of the spring, since the timing of flowering at midsummer is what the plant seeks, and this year, due to the late sowing at the end of May, the timespan from sowing to flowering was condensed. And perhaps the seemingly endless rain was also a factor. That could have stressed the stalks. The end result is that we will have fewer seeds to sow next year from this year's crop. Fortunately, the farm has been storing a few pounds of seeds from last year's crop, so we can dip into that for next spring. Those seeds will probably not be as viable, as seeds lose about 5–10% of their viability each year that passes. Still, we will have something to sow next spring, even if it may be another challenging crop!

I immediately placed the rippled stalks in their retting vats on the same day I removed the seed capsules. They filled two tanks.

The next step was to fill the tanks with water and weigh down the stalks with large rocks. 

During the ret setup, I was closely supervised by the calf staff!

Then the daily monitoring of the tanks took place. The past week, from September 24– October 2, has been unusually warm, so the tanks maintained an average temperature in the low to mid-seventies Fahrenheit. 

The first full day of the ret shows the beginning of the bacterial action to come.

The subsequent days showed much more bacterial action!

Every day, I pulled stalks from the ret to dry test and confirm their retting state. You want to avoid both under-retting the stalks and definitely avoid over-retting them! If you under-ret the stalks, you can re-ret them later. But there is no turning back from over-retted stalks. 

After four days, I drained and refilled a portion of the water to encourage more bacterial action. You can see the extent of the anaerobic bacteria in the foaming of the water!

On October 2, the 8th day of retting, the stalks were showing the release of fibers in my dry tests, so I pulled the stalks, rinsed them… 

…and they are currently drying once more in the farm greenhouse. They should be sufficiently dry in time for the public Fall Fest event at the farm, where I will be demonstrating the mechanical processing of the stalks into fiber and the spinning of the fiber into yarn! 

Come see the resulting fiber from this year's crop!

Gale Woods Fall Fest, October 11 & 12, 10 AM to 4 PM, 7210 County Road 110 West, Minnetrista, Minnesota, 55364. This is a free event! More info can be found here: https://www.threeriversparks.org/fallfest

Coming to the End of Summer – Gale Woods Farm Flax and the Minnesota State Fair

My visit to the Gale Woods Farm flax plot yesterday revealed the end of the flowering and a moth (butterfly?) continuing to gather pollen from the few flowers that are left. (See the peach-colored visitor on the flower in the center of the image. It was hard to get her in focus!)

Are the stalks even in there? It is hard to see the flax stalks because of the number of tall grasses and other wild plants that have popped up between the rows in the past couple of weeks. This is not how I would like to see the crop, but still, the stalks are healthy, and some have even grown taller!

When you take a closer look at the flax in the rows, you can see that the "weeds" are not among the stalks but between the rows. It's a healthy environment for the flax, even if it looks awfully messy! As Greg, the farm's garden manager says, we will be reverse-weeding the crop when harvest time comes, by pulling the stalks from around the weeds. The situation would certainly be worse if the crop weren't in rows!

In anticipation of the Minnesota State Fair (see below) and my presentation/demonstration there, I have been spinning and weaving last year's processed flax fiber from Gale Woods Farm. 

Here's some of the yarn I spun…

And the weaving in progress…

Come to the State Fair on August 22nd, and you will see the final woven fabric that I created, and the process of going from stalk to fiber. See ** below!

Bast plant fibers highlighted at the Minnesota State Fair!

This year, the Weavers Guild of Minnesota (WGM) has a new stage area in the Creative Activities building at the Minnesota State Fair, and to kick off the new stage, the Guild has arranged many intriguing fiber-related talks and demonstrations. Four of these focus on bast fibers, and I am thrilled to be one of the presenters (see August 22nd below)! Presentations are repeating three times during the day, at 10 AM, Noon, and 1:30 PM. (To find the new area, when you enter the main entrance of the Creative Activities building, immediately turn right and walk that side aisle for about 100 feet. You will see the WGM stage on your left.)

Here's the list of presenters by day and subject (note the ones in bold blue as they are related to bast fibers):

Thursday, August 21

Regenerating Regional Fiber Systems

Presented by Maddy Bartsch, Three Rivers Fibershed

**Friday, August 22

Flax as a Textile Fiber

Presented by Wendy Johnson, Saga Hill Studio

Saturday, August 23

Handcrafting the State Fair Fiber Arts Awards

Presented by Keith Piece, Alla Hale, and Barb Yarusso, Weavers Guild of Minnesota

Sunday, August 24

Adventures in Natural Dyeing

Presented by Natalie Reece, Weavers Guild of Minnesota

Monday, August 25

Cultivating Perennial Flax for Textiles

Presented by Matthew Holen, Department of Horticultural Science, University of Minnesota

(Matt is showing some of the results of the project I was contracted to work on this summer.)

Tuesday, August 26

The Ancient Art of Sprang

Presented by Sharon Wichman, Duluth Fiber Arts Guild

Wednesday, August 27

Nordic Weaving in Minnesota

Presented by Lisa-Anne Bauch, Weavers Guild of Minnesota

Thursday, August 28

Spotlight on Heart of the Lakes Weavers

Presented by Elizabeth Bayer, Annandale Art & Textile Center

Friday, August 29

Hemp as a Textile Fiber in Minnesota

Presented by Tom Michaels, Department of Horticultural Science, University of Minnesota

Saturday, August 30

Hmong Weaving and Fiber Arts in Minnesota

Presented by KaYing Yang, RedGreen Rivers & Mai Vang Huizel, Hmong Museum 

Sunday, August 31

The Art of Basketmaking

Presented by Debbie Johnson, Twin Cities Basket Weavers

Monday, September 1

From Fiber to Yarn in Minnesota

The Gale Woods Farm Flax is A-Buzzing

I visited the Gale Woods Farm linen flax this morning. Surprisingly, it is still in bloom, so you still have time to see the flowers. (Remember, mornings only—the flowers drop off by the afternoon.) 

There are many more post-bloom flower capsules on the stalks, so we are getting closer to the end of the flowering. A few capsules are just starting to turn brown, indicating the stalk is becoming mature. I still think the end of August will be our harvest time based on the number of stalks still in bloom and the fact that the majority of the stalks are still quite green at the base. 

This morning, the flowers were buzzing with both honeybees and bumblebees, along with smaller bees and flies. They were moving from flower to flower and very excitedly rubbing their bodies all around the stamens. 

I'm sorry for the blurry image. It was hard to get the bee in focus. It was so happy bumbling between flowers!

I was thrilled to see that the flowers are a hit with honeybees in particular. 

I wonder what flax flower honey tastes like?

I even saw a few bright red ladybugs 

(but the honeybee insisted on being the focus in this image—sorry, ladybug). 

These stalks are so rich with life when growing. And when they are mature and their time in the field is done, they give us lovely, strong fiber and elegant, comfortable fabric. Linen flax is truly a magical plant, from its growth all the way to its place in sustaining us in our lives as fiber and even food. The plant was named so appropriately by Linnaeus: Linum Usitatissimum—“the most useful” plant.
 
BTW… I just read a research paper on the fact that flax fiber dated to be 30,000 years old has been discovered in an archeological site in the foothills of the Caucasus in Georgia (the country, not the state)! The finding indicates that prehistoric hunter-gatherers were even using flax fibers for various uses in their survival. Flax is a remarkable, enduring legacy of this earth!

 

It's Full Bloom Time!

Don't wait! Visit the Gale Woods Farm linen flax crop this week to see the flowers before they're gone!

Summer is flying by, and I couldn't wait any longer to check on the Gale Woods Farm flax. It is in full bloom! I am so happy! Following my previous post, when I thought we were too early for the bloom, I am pleased to report that the crop has reached the full bloom stage at nearly 60 days. That's where it needs to be on nature's schedule for annual (linen) flax. (Can you see the butterfly visiting the flowers near the center left of the photo above? There were several of these flying from flower to flower this morning.)

Yes, the stalks are shorter than last year—about a foot shorter. But they are healthy. Some are showing a little yellowing at the base, indicating that their harvest date is approaching—in hopefully no less than 30 days—again, to be on nature's schedule.

Some capsules are forming from where the flowers have dropped off in the last week or so. Right on time!

As long as the extreme heat and humidity of the remaining summer don't affect the future maturity, we will have a nice crop of linen flax to pull at the end of August.

Although it was a very hot morning, it was also a gorgeous time to visit the field! Check out those lovely summer clouds!

If you come out to the farm to see the flowers this week, visit in the morning between 9 and noon, as the flower petals from the morning bloom will drop off after that time, and the stalks will appear fairly flowerless. You may catch a few butterflies visiting the flowers, too!