 A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO FLAX PROCESSINGBy Elizabeth Rump |
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"A Paper Mill near German-Town doth stand,
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Poem by Richard Frame |
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| Each farmer dedicated approximately two acres of land to the cultivation of flax, a slender, grass-like, annual plant with narrow leaves that blooms with small light blue flowers in early summer. Flax was planted in the early spring, and ranges in height between eighteen to thirty inches. When the seed pods replaced the flowers the flax was ready to be harvested. Flax is harvested by pulling the plant from the ground rather then cutting. One of the advantages of linen is its durability and this durability is derived from the length of the flax fibers. Therefore, you pull rather than cut the plant. (Note: Today’s linen is not as strong because the fibers must be cut so that our modern machinery can process linen.} After harvesting, the seed pods are removed using a flax flail. A flail was a heavy wooden beam, about four inches square and two feet long, with a crooked handle along one side. Flax was spread on the barn floor and the farmer would pound on the flax, separating the seeds from the stalk. A portion of the collected seed was saved for next year’s crop with the remainder taken to the oil mill to make linseed oil. (Linseed oil was a component of the ink made for printing presses, lamp fuel, and in cattle feed.) The fibers that are used to produce linen are found on the inside of the flax stalk. To separate the fibers from the stalk the flax must be retted, a process where the flax is wet, thus dissolving the natural glue which binds the flax fibers to the stalk. This could be done by laying the flax on the grass to absorb the dew, or by placing it in a stream or pond. The flax was then gathered and placed in the barn until further processing could be completed. The next step was to rid oneself of the outer stalk entirely and separate the fibers for spinning. First the stalks were placed, one handful at a time, into a flax break, a wooden device for crushing the outside stalk. Second, the flax was held against a vertical board and beaten with a wooden scutching knife to further reduce the outer stalk. Lastly, the flax was thrown, again, one handful at a time, through a series of smaller heckles (hackle). A heckle is a wooden board with a series of iron spikes which act as a comb to smooth the fibers. The coarser fibers which remain in the heckle were called tow. This tow was spun to produce course cloth for feed bags, and other coarsely made items. Prior to spinning, the flax was twisted into bundles called a strick. Spinning was normally a winter chore performed by the women and girls of the household. When the spinning was completed the thread was then sent to the weaver to produce the linen cloth. The weaver, most often a man, would quite likely keep a portion of the cloth as payment for his services. Very few 18th century households had their own full-sized loom. These were very large and expensive pieces of equipment for the most part owned and operated by those who were weavers by trade. It should be noted that some households had small looms on which a small quantity of narrow cloth could be produced. Total production time, from seed to clothes, could take a year to a year and a half. Thus, linen clothing was patched and reused by younger members of the family until it was no longer of any use. Even then, the life of the linen was not yet over; linen rags were collected by paper mills and converted to paper. Perhaps the ending lines of a 1696 poem by Judge Holmes published in 1847 by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania say it best, "Kind friend, when thy old shift is rent/Let it to th’ paper mill be sent."
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