If the low environmental impact of growing long-fiber flax isn’t compelling enough, processing the harvested flax plant into spinnable fiber is also much, much more sustainable than the vast majority of garment industry practices.
This is why the PA Flax Project’s educational efforts include flax processing workshops to demonstrate how each part of the plant is removed, ending with the long, strong fiber that is such a valuable commodity.
One of these workshops was on a sunny Friday morning in September at the Wyck Historic House, which is only a few steps away from the PA Flax Project office in Germantown. This proximity made it simple for Wysock to lug the needed materials from the office on a dolly. The large pile of flax to be processed was grown at the Henry Got Crops Farm at Saul High School and other sites.
The process is entirely mechanical, rather than chemical, and though the mill will run on powered machinery, the process can be completed from start to finish by hand with simple tools. Flax can be a zero-waste crop if it’s processed the right way, and the hand-tools used at the processing workshops are very effective for helping people understand this in a tactile way—how each step produces a marketable byproduct.
First, you take a handful of flax and drag the seed ends through a flax ripple, which is a sort of upright wooden comb with wide triangular teeth. The seeds fall off easily and, when you break open the pod, look like flax seeds you can buy at a grocery store, though those are from a different cultivar. These flax seeds can be used for chicken feed or linseed oil, which is used for woodworking and making paints. One attendee, Laura, is an artist and woodworker who had participated in the Square Yard Project due to her interest in the raw materials for linseed oil.
Next, you go to the flax break, where you slip the flax between the top and bottom arms that slam together and break apart the stalk. The retting process has caused the outer part of the stalk (the fiber) to separate from the inner core (the shive), and the impact of the break allows pieces of shive to fall away through the outer fiber.
This doesn’t get all the shive out, so the next step is the scutching board, where you drag a scutching knife (a blunt, flat, wooden tool) across the fibers to continue separating the shive from the fiber.
The shive can be used for animal bedding or, if mixed with something like lyme, for industrial building materials.
Next is the hackle, a scary-looking comb-like tool with extremely sharp teeth through which you drag the flax fiber to remove the tow.
The tow is the shorter fiber, fluffy and tangled, that can be mixed with other fibers to make flax textiles. (The term “linen” is reserved for textiles made from the longer fibers.)
It can also be used for bioplastics, like the cup Heidi brought back from Belgium.
At the end of the process, you have the long, smooth fiber that can be spun into linen thread.
As a framework for explaining the how and why of their flax-for-linen mission, the PA Flax Project fully embraces the quaint charm of the plant, the process, and the product. But what they have planned is no cottage industry.
Having already acquired the equipment that co-op members can use to harvest their flax crop, the Project’s next step is to set up a scutching mill where co-op members can retain a portion of the profit from processing their harvest.
At a larger processing event on September 28 at Lundale Farms in Chester County, Founder and CEO Heidi Barr discussed what she’d learned on her trip to visit flax producers in Belgium, who she said were very supportive once they ascertained that the Flax Project members are humble and willing to learn. She explained that collaboration is beneficial for the industry, especially because European producers can’t meet the rising demand for linen fiber.
There’s much to be learned from the old-school growing operations Barr observed in Belgium, many of which of which have been passed down in the same family for generations. One thing she noted was the close connection between the farmers who grow the flax and the millers who process it to make linen fiber. She talked about the “flax man” (with an eyeroll about the gendered term) who was sent from the mill to the farms to monitor the retting process. There are many variables that affect how long it takes for the pectins to break down; it can be as little as 3 days or as much as 2 weeks. Wysock probably would’ve appreciated a “flax man” to let her know when her Square Yard Project harvests were ready.
On this side of the pond, the Project will need about 4,000 acres of flax to keep the mill running close to capacity. As of this writing, they have roughly 30 to 50 acres committed for next year, and up to 1,000 acres from farmers expressing interest in participating in the next few years.
“I think everyone, when they see something that looks like straw in the corner turn into beautiful fiber, it’s just kind of a magical moment,” Director of Agriculture Bill Shick told me. “And the fact that you can do that without any chemicals… it kind of wakes people up or makes them aware of just how amazing plants can be, that there are beautiful fibers hiding in something that just looks like something you would mulch your lawn with or feed to a cow.”
This is the second in a series of articles that comprised my applied research project, Local Linen, for the Digital Journalism and Design master’s program at the University of South Florida.