It grows “beautifully” in Maine, could clothe and help feed your family, and almost no one here produces it anymore.
It’s flax, the straw-like plant with seeds that produce linseed oil, flaxseed oil, and cereal and stalks processed into linen. It was a staple of New England’s economy and Maine homesteads 200 years ago. It died out in the mid-19th century when cotton became commercially available, and local knowledge of home linen production went with it.
Several Maine women are growing, processing and spinning flax again, using techniques reverse engineered from the historical record.
“Flax is just another beautiful thing to do with spinning. It’s like a religious experience,” said Susanne Grosjean of Franklin, a rug weaver by trade. “I want everyone in the world to spin.”
Grosjean is also a member of the Wednesday Spinners, a group m/eeting weekly to spin for more than 45 years. Members have occasionally grown flax as a group too.
Working together is probably the historical method, she said, and likely the only way home linenmaking would be possible for many. The process is time-consuming and labor intensive. It can take a year from the time the seed is planted until it’s spun.
Today, flaxseed is only a significant American crop in North Dakota and Montana, where it is grown for oil production. The species are the same, but flax for linen is planted close together so it will grow upward.
A 2016 trial by the Maine Potato Board found oilseed yields similar to larger flax-growing states.
It could be more valuable than oats in potato field crop rotations, the study found. This spring, flax is worth $11.50 a bushel, while oats run $4.23 a bushel.
But transporting the seeds to Western processors would eat the profit, according to the board’s agronomist Jake Dyer. Growing it for fiber can be more challenging.
About 40 farmers tried in The County in the mid-1990s for the short-lived Aroostook Flax and Linen mill. There are no commercial linen mills in the United States today.
Margie Shannon of Belfast remembers watching a flax processing demonstration at a farm museum as a child. She later found out her family grew flax and was given a dozen linen sheets her great-great-grandmother handmade in 1818.
When she started growing flax herself in 1980, then processing it into linen about 10 years ago, it was harder than it looked and she had no one to ask how.
“Really, you just kind of do it,” she said. “You think, ‘What would my great grandmother have done?’ If one thing doesn’t work, we try something else.”
Shannon sows seeds in May or June, covered with compost and a sheet until they sprout. A perimeter fence holds the stalks upright.
“Nothing affects it,” she said, meaning no pests or disease. “Maybe because it’s such an uncommon plant.”
When the bottom half of the stalk is gold and the top is still green, the entire plant is pulled and dried.
Next, Shannon “puts it through various things” to remove seeds — she’s pulled them by hand, beaten them with a stick and stomped on them after putting them inside a pillowcase.
The stalks are then retted — left to rot — to separate fibers from their straw coating.
Shannon submerges them in a livestock watering tank, weighted by rocks and boards, for a few weeks until the water turns brown, bubbles and smells like sauerkraut. They can also be laid in winter snow, and long ago growers would submerge them in ponds.
When dry — Shannon puts the stalks in her car on a hot day to get them crispy — the fibers are broken with a sawhorse-like contraption with a wooden handle, or twisted by hand, then scraped.
Next the stalks are combed through “hackles” (like “a small bed of nails,” Shannon said) to reveal fibers ready for the spinning wheel. The fibers are 2 or 3 feet long compared with 4 or 6 inches in animal fibers.
“Like all spinning, it can be super frustrating, like you’re ready to throw it into the fire,” Grosjean said.
But with time, skills sharpen, and now Grosjean could spin it all day. Those who do it like the challenge, and it’s the only way to get the quality they want.
Others are interested — demonstrations draw crowds, and young homesteaders are intrigued — but they rarely go on to do it themselves, Shannon said. She and Grosjean know of two or three other people in the state growing flax seriously.
Flax is a “bast” plant fiber, like hemp, nettle and milkweed, which comes from inside of the stem. These materials have been used in clothing for thousands of years.
To today’s producers, the work is a connection to that history.
“I also hate to see it die,” Grosjean said. “Someone’s got to carry it on. I’m very willing to teach other people, if they are going to carry it on.”
Shannon said the endeavor connects her to her family — “old work in new hands” — and you never know when the knowledge could be useful. Plus, she feels a deeper attachment to things she’s made by hand.
Developing physical skills and knowledge also builds confidence, according to Shannon.
“It feeds you,” she said.
