Linen Letter 01 - May 26
News, reviews and progress towards bioregional linen production
News from the farm
An appreciation for petrol
This is the first time we have grown flax in a farm setting as opposed to a large garden. It has provided much awe for previous generations who farmed without fossil fuel help, given how much easier petrol powered machines make the process. A huge digger removed the grass layer and revealed some lovely soil, Zoe then roped in her teenage son to help cultivate this using a rotavator. No-till farmers may cringe at this but flax requires a ‘fine tilth’ and makes up for the ploughing by leaving its roots in the ground afterwards - hugely helpful to the next crop and mycorrhizal in the soil.
Sophie and her family joined in the following weekend and we used our bare armed strength to rake and used our hand held Polish seed drill to sow 4 different varieties of flax seed. One of the beds is a little stoney and the other a bit rooty and slightly damper. It will be interesting to see how the different varieties grow, how they compare to the variety we grew last year and the resulting fineness of the fibre.
Seed sowing and ‘science’
There are many variables that affect flax fibre outcomes and so we are starting to keep detailed spreadsheets - trying to do ‘science’ as Ruth, one of the wonderful growers we are working with, dryly stated. Ruth of Fresh and Green Vegetables CSA prepped her grade 1 soil beautifully with lots of power harrowing. We wish to find out how various varieties grow on her East Devon farm. Ruth captured us scratching our heads ‘doing maths’- working out the seeding rate using different seeding plates.
(Note for farm and seed geeks: we found that the beets/chard plate with 3 holes closed off seemed to work for the Earthway seeder. Ross at the Apricot Centre Dartington, used the fancier Jang and found that using the R-12 roller with the gearing 14 on the front wheel and 9 on the back provided the highest output).
We also created a flax sowing dance based on a ‘high knees’ marching around the field tradition from Sweden. We skipped with high hands and knees singing Satish Kumar’s ‘Beautiful” song to encourage the flax to grow tall. We are sure this new tradition will evolve and any input is very welcome!
The dances worked and the flax has germinated, yay! thankfully watered in by the rain goddess. Normally VERY wet Devon has been VERY dry this month so we may need to set up irrigation for the baby flax. Once it’s bigger it can manage very well without much water.
Indigo babies
Indigo babies are underway. 4 varieties of hundreds of tiny plants are repotted and happy in the warm and wet greenhouse. They will be planted out in early June and we have lots more ‘science’ planned to learn how flax and indigo grow together, exploring potential synergies in growing and processing. More on this soon.
Sophie and Zoe spent a day with Babs Behan in a beautiful setting on Dartmoor learning about the joys of indigo, its magical ways and how many plants you actually need to grow to make a vat (guess what - it’s a very big number!).
Production Progress
In mid May we are building our breaking machine. Nick finalised the breaker wheels and collected the poles from a Totnes welder. There is a massive pile of parts accumulating in Zoe’s living room ready to be taken to the farm to assemble.
Health & Safety Update
Big news: we bought a fire extinguisher, fire blanket and wall mountable first aid kit, this makes us truly ready to go. None of this is chemical free and breaks our avoidance of plastic immediately but this will be the first of many pragmatic compromises. We’ve also added a tick removing tool, apparently very important for landworkers. Lymes disease recently struck one of our fellow flaxers and warnings are being shared about infectious ticks that don’t cause the tell tale rings around a bite.
A top tip heard on whatsapp: if you remove a tick, stick it on a calendar the next day and then if any symptoms develop or you have any concerns you have the creature to be tested.
What we’re enjoying:
Zoe read “On the Eighth Day, God created allotments’ - a brief history of the allotments movement by David Boyle. It explains where the term ‘3 acres and a cow’ came from and provides a lot of context around access to land in the UK.
https://david-boyle.co.uk/history/eighth-day
Zoe repotted the indigo listening to ‘My Albion’ a series by folk commentator Zakia Sewell for the BBC broadcast in 2020 but feels very relevant today. Intense and intelligent thinking around Britishness that feels even more charged 6 years on.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000pffy
Sophie has been reading Babs Behan book on ‘Botanical Dyes’ and exploring naturally occurring substantive dyes that don’t need a mordant and grow in Devon. She is inspired by the most beautiful pinks, yellows and olives coming from hawthorn bark, blossom, leaves and berries.
https://www.botanicalinks.com/books
Nick has been reading Brian Merchant’s book on the Luddites, Blood in the Machine. He will share more about what the Luddites can teach us about our relationship with technology in an upcoming post (spoiler alert: you can be a machine building Luddite!)
Nick especially enjoyed this episode of Downstream about the supply chains that produce Lithium-Ion batteries and how China has come to dominate their production so completely. The discussion covers neo-colonial mining behaviour in Congo, but also the culture of engineering and manufacturing that the global North has so distanced itself from in recent years. Another surprising insight was that the margins on production are so small, that even at scale the industry is unattractive to a typical investor and would not have gotten off the ground without Chinese state support (yet more evidence of how markets fail us).
We are looking forward to the warmer weather on its way but hope it’s not so warm that the baby flax suffers.
Till next time.
Zoe, Sophie, Nick xxx
Ps. we plan to send monthly light hearted updates with longer form, thoughtful articles peppered throughout the year. Thank you for reading.