Gale Woods Farm Flax Harvest Day – September 3, 2025!

And so, the growing year has come to a close. The Gale Woods Farm linen flax crop has been pulled from the field! 

The harvesting crew consisted of three of us: the Gale Woods Farm manager, one of his crew, and me. We harvested the entire 125 x 4-foot plot in four hours on September 3rd. It was a rush harvest since the flax had approached maximum maturity at 100 days, and there was no time to waste! Besides, it was finally a beautiful day! A rarity this year—a day with no rain and comfortable temperatures! 

Our bundle count was 198. That is almost a quarter more than the number of bundles from last year. Considering the plot length and width were about the same as last year’s plot, the practice of sowing the flax in rows seems to be effective from a yield perspective. 

Some flowers were still blooming on a few stalks!

Of course, this year’s crop had its issues, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts. The reasons for some of the quality issues may be found as I ret and mechanically process the stalks. 

The primary issue was that there were many zones in the plot that contained stalks that were fully brown (as you can see in the image above), and they might be mixed with stalks that were still fairly green. Fortunately, more stalks were in the proper partial yellowing state, which means they are ready for harvesting. Because we’ve had such a wet and odd summer weather-wise, I had considered that the brown stalks possibly got hit with a fungus, although I don’t see any typical signs of that in the stalks. There also wasn’t a variation in the germination timing to explain the variation in maturity between the stalks, since they were grain-drilled into the rows at a constant depth, and all of the stalks emerged at roughly the same time. So why did some stalks mature so rapidly? What else happened to cause the browning? Perhaps further research, involving the processing of the stalks, will provide answers to these questions. I am also going to do some testing of the fully brown stalks to see if they actually retted in the field while standing, since some seem to be breaking down into fiber already.

The weeds we couldn’t control weren’t too much of a problem. The stalks were easy to pull, and the weeds were pretty easy to dismiss as the stalks were pulled, as you can see in the photo above.

The farm manager plans to plant a cover crop of peas and grain in the pulled space (see above), a good practice for replenishing the soil. Flax takes a lot of nutrients out of the soil. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: Flax should not be planted in the same plot for at least 5–7 years. That has something to do with not only replenishing the soil but also avoiding disease in subsequent flax crops.

Plan a visit to the drying flax bundles! 

Go to Gale Woods Farm (7210 County Rd 110 W, Minnetrista, Minnesota) and look toward the farm fence along the right-hand side of the entry road, and you will see the stalks hanging there until, probably, September 15th or so, weather-willing (no more rain!). 

The next step to complete the crop is to ripple the seeds (remove the seed capsules from the stalks) and ret the bundles by submerging them in water-filled stock tanks. For retting, warm weather is appreciated! The retting will probably happen in the greenhouse behind the barn in order to increase the temperature of the tank water, so that's another location to check out if you miss the stalks on the fence. If all goes well, the stalks may be rippled, retted, drying, or dry by the time of the Fall Fest, a public event at the farm on October 11 & 12. I will be giving ongoing demonstrations of mechanically processing the stalks into fiber at that free event. Check the Gale Woods Farm website for more info: https://www.threeriversparks.org/location/gale-woods-farm

Minnesota State Fair & Weavers Guild of Minnesota (WGM) Presentations

A view of my Flax to Fiber presentation display at the new WGM stage in the Creative Activities building at the Minnesota State Fair.

Thanks to all who attended this year’s Minnesota State Fair and stopped by the new, HUGE, WGM presentation stage! I had a blast speaking and demonstrating the steps involved with turning flax stalks into linen fiber! It really was fun to share the process and answer questions from the public. Other plant fiber presenters during the 12-day fair were Matt Holen of the University of Minnesota Horticulture Department, who spoke on his perennial flax-to-fiber studies (a project I was heavily involved with this summer), and Tom Michaels, a professor and hemp researcher at the University of Minnesota Horticulture Department, who spoke about hemp fiber and that growing industry. Tom even brought huge hemp plants to show where the fiber is extracted from! (I understand that their transport onto the fairgrounds was "interesting.”) Hemp fiber extraction is so similar in many ways to flax fiber extraction! (And no, there is no THC content to speak of in the plants—that aspect is closely regulated.)

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 Bloom is Nearly Off the Stalks

My visit to the Gale Woods Farm flax this morning revealed fewer flowers and more seed capsules that are turning brown. We remain on track for harvesting at the end of August!

The harvest this year is going to be interesting. Because of my tight schedule this summer and the continuously rainy, hot, humid, smoky weather, I haven't been able to tend the plot as it should have been tended. The actual flax stalk rows aren't too nasty with weeds, although the plot edges are buried in grasses, thistles, etc. It is even hard to see how the stalks are maturing, let alone get close to them! 

While trying to pull a few of the more massive grasses, I accidentally pulled a stalk. 

It is the length of much of the crop—32 inches—but branching has started halfway up the stalk, so the useful fiber will only be about 16 inches when it's processed. (Branching is preferred in the top 1/5 of the stalk for the best long fiber extraction.) Plus, the stalks appear to be thicker in circumference this year. I feared this would happen with the wider spacing between the rows. (See my earlier post about how the seeds were sown this year.) Of course, it may not be just the spacing issue that has caused this. Other factors, such as late sowing and the weather conditions, could have played a part. When I visit the flax next week, I will reach into the tighter rows to see if they have more favorable stalks. It was so miserably hot and humid in the field today, I didn't hang around for very long!

An Opportunity to Learn More About Bast Fibers at the Minnesota State Fair!

If you're in Minnesota on Friday, August 22nd, come to the Minnesota State Fair, Creative Activities Building. I will be presenting Flax as a Textile Fiber and demonstrating the mechanical breaking process that gleans the fiber from the stalk. My presentation/demonstration will be on the Weavers Guild of Minnesota's (WGM) new stage. It will be repeated three times, at 10 AM, Noon, and 1:30 PM. 

If you can't make it on the 22nd, there are two other days highlighting bast fibers on the new WGM stage: On Monday, August 25th, Matt Holen, a researcher in the Horticultural Science Department of the University of Minnesota, will be presenting Cultivating Perennial Flax for Textiles. (His project is the one that has kept me busy for most of the summer.) And, on Friday, August 29th, Tom Michaels, also from the University of Minnesota, Department of Horticultural Science, will be presenting Hemp as a Textile Fiber in Minnesota. We are certainly loving the bast fibers this summer!

Sowing the 2025 Summer of Flax 

from research activities to getting hands dirty

The past couple of months have been busy here at Saga Hill! As usual, keeping up with the blog is a back-burner activity. But it's time to share what is happening!

Between preparing and teaching fiber classes (primarily knitting). . .

My linen cloth knitting workshop at the American Swedish Institute

. . . and giving presentations about flax history, growing, and processing this spring, I have been contracted by the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute (AURI) to process a huge amount of perennial flax for study by the Horticultural Science Department of the University of Minnesota. They are looking at the fiber viability of different cultivars of perennial flax, which typically have a very short stalk and lots of flower branching that breaks up the stalk into shorter pieces. (Flax that is typically used for fiber, aka linen, is derived from the annual flax plant, which is taller, has less flower branching, and is more biologically suited for long fiber extraction.) 

The promise of finding a good perennial flax for fiber use is exciting since perennial flax is more suited to growing in the upper Midwest and is harvested by cutting the stalk at the root crown, which might allow the plant to have more than one harvest in a year. It is also easier to harvest with common farm equipment. Plus, finding a suitable perennial flax for fiber use would open an even broader scope of applications, not just for linen but for bio-industrial use. 

The flowers from my home perennial flax plants have already started blooming.

It is very exciting to be part of this research venture! However, the project’s completion timeline is very tight due to a funding deadline. I have over 40 laundry-sized bags and bundles of perennial flax to process by hand into fibers by the end of July, and our weather, so far, has not been especially cooperative for the first step—the retting (rotting) of the stalks to release the fibers found in the bast material. 

I am using cattle stock tanks to ret the perennial flax cultivars.

As you can see above, I am using stock tanks to ret the fibers, which would normally be a great method for retting if the weather were warm. But this year, it’s a challenge to keep the tank temperatures in a good range for retting. It’s been quite cold and rainy for the past few weeks. And, with not enough electrical outlets, I don’t have the option of plugging in heaters for all five tanks. Fortunately, the tanks are black and absorb ambient heat rather well. I also found black covers for the tanks that hold the water at a surprisingly steady temperature, even if it is cooler than I’d like to see due to ambient temperature fluctuations. All-in-all, the next two months will be a time of discovery in the wider world of linum usitatissimum! However, please note that I won’t be able to share my findings, as this is a research project. But perhaps when the study report is released, I will have an opportunity to tell you more.

Gale Woods Farm—a new annual flax crop has begun for the summer of 2025

Due to the uncooperative weather this spring, the planned crop at Gale Woods Farm has had a slow start but has now suddenly taken on literal growth! 

We were coming to the end of the flax sowing season at the end of May, and, due to the weather and other farm issues, the seeds had not been sown yet, so the farm’s garden manager decided to use a grain drill to plant the crop this year. It was the quickest method of sowing the seeds during such rainy weather, and an efficient means of finally getting the seeds into the ground before it’s too late for the sowing of linen flax. (Early spring is the best time to sow annual flax—early April is best for our region.) 

Grain drills sow the seeds in rows, and the grain drill that the farm used is really set for perennial seed flax sowing, not annual flax. That means the seeds were sown in rows that are somewhat far apart, ranging from 2 inches to 6 inches apart. But when annual flax is sown in rows, the usual goal is to sow it in rows with little space between them so the stalks will grow with less branching and support each other. It will be interesting to see how the stalks mature this summer between the wider-spaced rows and the narrower ones. Will some branch out too much to achieve good fiber for linen? Time will tell!

The Gale Woods Farm annual flax plot for 2025.

About 100 lineal feet of seeds were sown on May 27^th, and the seedlings emerged around June 4^th. This year’s seeds came from last year’s farm crop of Avian linen flax that we rippled from the stalks at the end of last summer. The farm garden manager conducted a seed test in early spring to assess seed viability. There was an approximate 90 percent germination rate, so we knew the seeds would be good for this year’s crop. 

The test seeds were sown in a greenhouse flat.

Since it feels like murder to me to toss any baby seedlings, I planted the flax seedlings from the seed test into pots at my home/studio. I’ve planted annual flax in pots in the past, but have found that they grow to a certain height and then lodge and die off. This year, I used soil with no added nitrogen (extra nitrogen can cause lodging). I’ve also learned that even though the roots of the annual flax plant appear to be very short—actually only a few inches long—there are finer, hairy roots that go much deeper. So, I planted the seedlings in deeper pots than I have in the past (in pots with a 9-inch soil depth) in hopes of getting these stalks to make it to maturity.

 

The test flax seeds have grown into tall potted plants!

I might find that I need even deeper pots, as the stalks are now 24 inches tall and seem to be slowing down in growth. Since they have been growing for 60 days (from when they were sown in the greenhouse flat), they are due to flower soon, so perhaps they are putting their energy into developing the flower capsules, or they are stunted by a pot that is too shallow for their full growth. If they are nearing the end of their growth and about to put out seed capsules, the stalks will be shorter than last year’s crop, which averaged around 40+ inches. But I suspect the height difference is due to growing in a pot that is still too shallow for their full maturity. After 60 days of growth, the flowers should be starting to appear, and they are not. As a comparison, it will be interesting to see how tall the flax from the same seed supply grows in the field this summer, where the ground depth is unlimited.

The Annual Flax Crop at the Farm Today

This morning, I went out to Gale Woods to see if the seedling rows needed weeding. A benefit to growing them in rows is that the weed situation is easier to manage. Plus, due to closer management of the seedbed, there were very few weeds to pull. 

The plants are already about 1–2 inches tall after one week of emergence. They like the current cool, rainy weather, so that is a good aspect of this fickle June. 

Come out to Gale Woods Farm to visit the crop (7210 County Rd 110 W, Minnetrista, MN 55364)! You will find it in the field located on the right, just after you enter the gates of the farm. Look to the far back end of the cultivated area. The flax rows are at the far right-hand end of the field, running south to north. Since annual flax (linen flax), when grown in a field, typically takes 60 days to flower, be sure to schedule a visit around the middle to the last week of July. But come anytime to see the stalks grow taller and taller! 

A view of baby flax sprouts at ground level – Gale Woods Farm, June 10, 2025.

Flax Season is Springing Ahead in 2025, and other news!

But first, I realized that I never put up a blog about the linen flax processing demo at last fall's Harvest Festival at Gale Woods Farm (an educational farm in the Twin Cities Three Rivers Park District). It was a fabulous event! Absolutely packed with visitors. I send out a thank you to all who dropped by my demonstration area to learn how linen flax is mechanically processed from stalk to spinnable fiber. The farm plans to repeat the event this fall, and I'll continue to blog about this year's crop (yes, there will be one—see the end of this blog post) as the season comes nearer.

I was so busy demonstrating that I never had a chance to photograph the activity, but here are images of my demonstration area:

Perennial Flax and the University of Minnesota

Now, I want to catch you up on what has happened over the past few months. Late last year, the University of Minnesota Department of Horticultural Science contracted with me to process some of their experimental perennial flax. The goal was to see how three different varieties might be processed into textile fiber. 

Since the work needed to occur during the winter months, I put a large cattle feeder tub in my basement, put an aquarium heater into the tub, filled the tub with water, and placed three groups of experimental perennial stalks into the tub. (It was actually a re-ret of stalks that had been retted for about a week at the U of M but still were not retted enough for mechanical processing.)

Cattle feeder tub with an aquarium heater in the center.

The flax stalks were placed into the water to soak. I placed dish tubs filled with water to weigh down the flax stalks so they would be fully submerged in the vat.

The process took a total of 14 days, with 12 of those at a steady temperature of 88° F. After the first day, the vat started to show a skim of bacterial matter on the water’s surface. Yay! That was a good sign things were happening. 

The bubbles show bacterial action happening in the vat. The rotting of the stalks has begun!

Shortly after that, the smell started. Ooh la la! Our basement stunk! But it was all for the cause of science! Having a husband who doesn’t seem to have a sense of smell helped! My dog, on the other hand, thought the vat was really yummy smelling, so I needed to take special measures to keep her from drinking the vat water. 

When the stalks showed signs of breaking down, I cooled the vat down for 24 hours, pulled the stalks, rinsed them, and set them out to dry on clothes racks.

I kept the groups tied during the entire retting and drying process in order to know which variety was which. I loosened the ties a bit while they were drying to allow air to get around the stalks.

After about a week of drying, they were ready to break and mechanically process. Perennial flax stalks are known to be much stiffer and harder to break than linen (annual flax) stalks, and that proved to be true. The cellular structure of perennial flax is different than what is found in linen flax. Nevertheless, I was able to break the stalks down and ultimately release fibers. The tops, where the flowers emerge from branches, broke off, even crumbled, into waste matter. That was not surprising since the flowering branches are the weakest part of a perennial flax stalk. And since there are more flowers in the perennial varieties of flax than in linen flax, the branches that carry the flowers create several breaking points in the stalk.

The stalks were very firm before breaking them.

Annual (linen) flax is pulled when harvested, roots and all, but perennial flax is cut at the ground level to allow it to regrow from the root crown, so there were no roots on these perennial stalks. What remained was the main stalk to finish breaking, scutching (scraping off the boon—the woody matter that contains the fibers), and hackling the remaining stalk matter into fine fibers that could be spun.

Perennial flax after scutching off the boon with a scutching knife (the knife is the wooden tool hanging off the side of the scutching board).

Two of the three varieties showed similar qualities in color and fiber length. They were a dark tan color and fairly short—twelve inches or so. 

I used three hackles—coarse, medium, and fine—to hackle the scutched fibers. This image is of the perennial flax that was the longest and finest of all the varieties. The tow that resulted from the hackling process is in front. There was a LOT of tow! That can be blended with wool for spinning or used in a variety of other ways. Firestarters and paper making are some uses!

The third variety, shown above, was quite nice as a potential textile fiber. Although it was shorter than a typical linen flax fiber, about 18 inches long, it was lighter in color and fine enough for spinning.

I will continue to test additional perennial varieties this spring and post the results here as the University allows the information to be shared.

Linen Flax at Gale Woods in 2025

Back to the annual variety: linen flax! Another plot of linen flax is being planned for this spring at Gale Woods Farm. I have been invited to champion it again this year, perhaps once more as a volunteer if funding for a contract position doesn't come through. (To potentially not be funded for my time is disappointing, but I am committed to seeing another crop come into bloom and having the opportunity to share this wonderful fiber with our community!)

The first step of the work has begun! A germination test of seeds from last year's stalks was started at the farm by the garden supervisor, Greg. As of April 14^th, 110 of 130 seeds from last year’s rippled flax stalks have sprouted in a flat in the farm greenhouse! We are happy with that response. 

This image was from April 11th, when about 3/4s of the linen flax seeds had germinated. More came up in the following days.

There are even several stalks coming up under the greenhouse table rack, where the seeds fell into the underlying soil during the rippling process last fall. Since they are “volunteers,” they are growing quickly in the warm greenhouse environment and are already a few inches tall! Unfortunately, many will need to be sacrificed so the farm staff can get the garden crops started in flats on the table rack. I plan to rescue a few of these to put in pots at my house. I am giving up on trying to grow linen flax in the ground around my home since I have too much shade for a successful crop. I can find a sunny place in my driveway for pots, though.

One More Item to Share

Recently, I was asked to write an article about linen flax in Norway for the Norwegian Textile Letter, an international publication based in the Twin Cities. In the article "Linen Flax in Norway: Past, Present, Future,” along with other pertinent Norwegian flax news, I talk about how Norway is taking part in the Grow One Square Meter of Flax movement that is sweeping the world! Enjoy the article! https://norwegiantextileletter.com/article/flax-in-norway/

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!