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!

 

 

 

A Rippling Good Time Was Had!

The flax stalks had been drying on the fence line for nearly two weeks, but the farm staff moved them into the greenhouse because of another bout of rainy and stormy weather. 

That was a good move since we were able to ripple (remove) the seed ovules (the capsules containing the seeds) inside the greenhouse last Friday, August 23. That was two weeks after the harvest and the typical drying period before rippling. A few of the stalks had a green hue in the middle of the bundles, so perhaps they were not fully dry. But we moved ahead with the rippling anyway.

Since we didn’t have a “true” seed-removing hackle, we used an open-tined garden rake as the first tool to pull off the capsules and followed it up with a wool hackle (used in preparing wool for worsted spun fiber—something I had in my teaching tools). This two-step process worked quite well.

 

After three hours of rippling with four of us rotating between the hackles, we ended up with a LOT of seed capsules. Considering the capsules average five seeds per capsule, we undoubtedly had a lot of seeds to try germinating and sowing for next year. 

Greg, the garden supervisor, took aside about two cups of capsules and debris and winnowed it down (cleaned out the debris) to about a half cup of seed. In the photo, he is letting the wind blow away the lightweight chaff as the heavier seeds drop into the bucket. There wasn't enough time to winnow all the seeds that day, but with what was gathered in the tarp under the rippling hackles, there should be more than enough seeds to give it a go for another crop. We also left a quarter of the stalks in the field dedicated to harvest for seeds, not for linen fiber. So, there should be no worries about having enough seeds for next year’s crop!

As I write this, an UPDATE! The winnowing has been completed, and there were 5.5 pounds of seed just in the approximately 125 lineal feet of harvested flax! Considering that we started out with 1.5 pounds for the entire 150 lineal feet, that is a huge seed yield!

The winnowed seeds show a variety of maturity levels. The lighter-colored seeds are probably not mature enough for sowing next year, while the mature flax seeds are medium brown. Interestingly, based on my research, the stalks with the less mature seeds will likely have finer flax fiber, so harvesting the stalks at this stage should be good for our fiber goals. What is left in the field will be more suited for next year’s seed crop since those stalks, maturing longer, will be too woody for good linen fiber. Greg will do a germination test of the seeds to see if the seeds from the stalks still left in the field will germinate better. It will be interesting to discover the results!

The rippled flax stalks are now resting in the greenhouse while we await the next step: retting (rotting) the rippled stalks. (Check out that corn stalk in the middle! It was from a rogue kernel of corn that germinated in the greenhouse and was probably the tallest corn stalk at the farm this year due to the poor growing conditions. That is why they left it standing! 😂) 

We are waiting until after Labor Day weekend (the first week of September) to begin the retting process. I am crossing my fingers that we will have warm weather into September since we are retting the flax outdoors, probably in vats or laying them in a field to dew-ret if we cannot find large enough vats. Warm weather is essential to keep a warm environment for retting in a vat or field. 

The stalks need to be retted and thoroughly dried before the final mechanical step, which is processing them into fiber. Time is getting tight! We have a deadline of October 13—the Gale Woods Fall Fest day (10 AM – 4 PM), when I will demonstrate those last steps—hopefully with the Gale Woods Linen Flax!