Oh Dear - should have posted this before now.  Last week (May 13 Tuesday) we bundled the rest of the retting flax and took it all to the barn. It was nice that it was all dry enough to stack without the fear of it continuing to rot.  
So, that is the last work in the field that we'll be doing for some time. We have enough flax to process for a couple of years or more.  We should be doing more of that breaking, scutching & hackling now the warm dry weather is here.  Flax does not seem to process well in damp weather so I guess we'll have our winters to do nothing but spin flax to linen. At least that can be done indoors.  So I guess the plan would be to work hard this summer so we have enough to spin in winter.

Beatrice and I went out to check on the retting flax laying in the field at SHAS (Saanich Historic Artifact Society) and it's ready to bundle. We checked the weather and it didn't look good for Saturday (showers & rain) but Sunday doesn't look too bad.

We want the flax to dry a bit after the rain on Saturday so we'll leave things to dry in the field until later in the afternoon.  About 4pm Sunday we could start bundling the flax, leave the bundles in the field (to dry further) and before we go home stook loosely (so the breezes can finish drying throughout the stook)  in the field by the end of the train. There is some nice weather next week so we'll take it all to the barn one evening during the week so the flax can have a day to dry off any dew from the morning.

>>Posting this the day after checking the field and the weather forecast gives a different look on the weather. Going to be nice today apparently. But we'll bundle tomorrow (Sunday) anyway.

This will be the last of the field work for a long time - a few years of processing to do before we ever need to plant any more flax.
barb

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