As we enter sowing time for flax here on the West Coast, it seems a good moment to announce EartHand is a member of the North American Linen Association! This newly formed non-profit is a cross-border alliance that is helping connect us all for sharing resources, knowledge and support towards re-building a linen and related flax materials industry on this continent.
So far, we have greatly enjoyed the monthly membership meetings online; meeting ‘the movers and shakers’ on this continent, as well as meeting folks last month from Fibreshed Scotland working on their own seedbank project.
The importance of building our own systems has never been more clear then the fact that no seed will be leaving Europe this year due to the poor growing season last year.
We are so lucky to have Carol Hyland at Alderley Grange Farm in Saanich who is now selling linore seed she is growing in Canada sourced from the Fibrevolution project! When we first started growing flax in 2011, our seeds came all the way from Holland and were ordered from Pennsylvania, and one year they arrived 4 weeks after the best planting window. This year that would not even be an option but luckily, we ordered our seeds from Carol and Canada Post delivered them 2 days later.
So, a shout out of gratitude for the great work being done by Fibrevolution and all the folks that are connected now through NALA.
Are you interested in growing flax -even a little ‘curiosity plot’? Now is the time to plant.
Generally, look for soil about 8 degrees C, air temperatures in the 8 to 15 degree C range, nights not dipping below 3 degrees C, and some moist days in the forecast.
If you are looking for a book to help explain all the steps, you can’t do much better then this little gem, Homegrown Linen: transforming flax seed into fibre written by Raven Ranson, another artist on the West Coast of Canada.
AND, if you are wanting to learn about the processing, keep your eye out for EartHand events over the summer celebrating flax- our first coming up is scheduled for April 20th– a public processing day to break the flax straw grown with Kwantlen Polytech University at the Richmond farm last year- we have 8 different varieties to process and investigate how last years strangely dry and hot month of May impacted the different seeds.
