Linen Fibre Preparation

So much to do! I am building a flax break, and also a bunch of really dangerous ripplers (those nails)! I am also figuring out how to deal with around 120 lbs of flax. it smells quite strongly too…

I picked up a 25″x25″x25″ box to hold a bale. Also to be able to stack bales in storage. But a box that size is around $11 and I have 12 bales left. Too many to afford to put into boxes for long without any processing.

I have a number of smaller boxes around and started using them with the first bale of Vesta, that I have begun processing. Not difficult, but it is time consuming. I do this on the weekends as I’m back working days in Guelph.

All of the bales are off the floor in my farm house. Many on the smaller boxes the finished processed fibres will be going into.

Starting with the Vesta bale, I remove the seeds and the bottom 1″of roots (mostly removing soil clods). I’m wearing very heavy hide gloves while doing this!

The Vesta bale is first as it fell apart when I took it out of the car. Most of the bale got stuffed into a box. The trimmed pieces go in the done box for storage, and I can mark each box.

Start

End

I head back to the farm today, and I’m hoping to finish processing most of the Vesta. I’ll decide how many boxes to get (between 4-6) and keep working on prepping the remaining fibres for scutching and sales. I have been looking for long stem flower boxes locally with no success, but I know where I can go in Mississauga for packaging to wrap everything up.

For the next big task before scutching, I will be sending out another email to the volunteers for help in dealing with those last four plots of seeds on the UWO fields, harvesting, rippling and separating seeds from chaff.

Somewhere between Sept 12-14 we need to go harvest those seeds.

There will be dangerous nail ripplers clamped to plastic tables on giant tarps! And then a bunch of separating seeds from the husks. More stuff to make – graduated screens I suspect.

Thanks to everyone helping out in this gigantic project!