It’s been a few weeks now that we’ve enjoyed the little periwinkle flowers on our Marilyn flax crop.
But, all good things come to an end, and the flowers do not stay forever. They say, when the bottom third turns yellow, the lower leaves start to fall off, and the seed pod is almost ripe, it’s time to harvest flax.
This morning we decided it was time to pull the flax by hand.
Here in Minnesota, the morning was cool, but it’s supposed to reach the 80s F today. We went out first thing to handle the task. The kids thought it was great fun.
We’ve been comparing our flax with how the flax looks on the Irish Flax Farming videos online. Our flax looks just a little more dry and yellow through the length of the stalk than those in Ireland.
The kids carefully laid the flax stalks in one direction, creating neat bunches or “beets” that would be kept together with ties of a few flax stalks.
Finally, the bunches were lined up together to form “stooks”.
