Pulling Our Weight… In Flax

So we just spent all of Saturday pulling flax. It was only a small field, 10 x 10m I reckon.

Flax has to be pulled by hand, roots and all. I didn’t think it would take as long as it did although I was prepared for it, knowing everything seems to take longer than I anticipate… We were pretty shattered by the end of it and my knuckles are still pretty sore today, Monday... For a couple of days, my body was in that stiff state that comes after one has spent a day doing something really repetitive. The pulling was not particularly hard work, but a full day of it takes a toll.

We’re now leaving it out to dry for a bit but the weather is not looking great over the next week or so. The forecast is currently for rain for the foreseeable future (10 days) and who knows, this could be it for 2026. Fingers crossed that won't be a huge issue.

We are not growing this flax for linen. We’re growing it to eventually rethatch the roof of the mill. This was essentially just the trial run. We’re hoping to grow the next batch from the seeds harvested from this batch. However we might organise a little barbecue with friends that might want to help with the pulling in 2027… now that we know what to expect, it seems like just having additional 3-4 people would make this job a lot less painful.

We got 39 beets. We are hoping that 2-3 seasons of successful flax growing might give us enough material for the roof, as well as enough time to get the alteration through planning and come up with a suitable method. We are currently thinking I will do the bulk of the build-up in reed, and finish it in flax. We are also planning on reinstating the original roof pitch (and removing breeze block from the wall top) and the half hips - a little discovery I made during last year's repair works to the top of the NW gable, where newer cement mortar was cleanly joined to older lime mortar along the flat line of a previous wall plate. We are considering first building the new structure underneath the old and replacing corrugated sheets a section at a time, as we'll be learning on the job.

My knowledge of flax and thatching is currently very limited. I attended a couple of courses, one with flax (albeit a different technique) and one with reed. The former was led by master rope thatcher Brian Lafferty, who has kindly been giving us advice on harvesting our current crops. We are, of course, planning to attend a few more training sessions before we start messing with the roof. Additional thanks go to John, who has gifted us a bag of flax seeds that did a wonderful job of growing into these gorgeous plants, the world's best neighbour, PJ, who has rented us the flax field and helped with just about everything!

As Chris said halfway through this flax pulling ordeal… does this make us farmers?