The Flax Plot

Thursday was spent in the garden. The pound of "Lisette" flax seeds I bought from Landis Valley Farm went into the approx 150 square foot plot.

Since it is hard to weed flax once it gets more than a few inches tall I wanted to reduce the weed seed load as much as possible in this area. Over the last two weeks I hoed it four times in hopes that a large number of weed seeds would germinate and then be butchered. This is my first planting of flax and it will be interesting to see how this progresses.

The Flax Process

The 50th annual Goschenhoppen Festival was yesterday and Friday and I was able to go for a short while on Saturday morning. The heat was too brutal for a prolonged visit or an afternoon trip. I spent about an hour and a half there, mostly looking at the spinning and textile related areas. They put on a great flax demonstration. From their patch of flax growing:

To their demo of flax drying after retting:

Removing the seeds:

Flax breaking:

And scutching:

And hetcheling:

And finally spinning:

All the demonstrators are very informative and open to questions. They made me want to grow my own patch of flax next year!
In the next post I'll show photos of other textile demos.