First Linen-Making of the Season

Julia Ostertag of the UBC Orchard Garden grew and retted flax a few years ago as part of the research for her PhD thesis, which is an arts-based inquiry into the history and cultures of school gardens.

 I wish that we could have had more time to discuss her findings, because it sounds like school gardens have a much more varied and extensive history than I realized! 

Sadly for us, Julia is wrapping up her PhD and moving back east this summer. We got together a few weeks ago at Trimble Park to turn some of her remaining flax into linen (which is much more portable than a big bundle of thin sharp sticks!)

The Garden in the fifth week of July...

Rain the previous week, then more sun over the weekend.

I am told that the golden colour of the stalks means that the grains are almost ready for harvest.
This is pretty inconvenient for Brian and I, considering that our Harvest Home Celebration isn't scheduled for another 4 1/2 weeks.... but it works out fine for everyone who plans to attend said Celebration, because it simply means we'll be WEAVING wheat instead of HARVESTING wheat. 

Gorgeous feather heads of the Rodney oats.

The heads of the Black Einkorn wheat 

The heads of the Utrecht Blue wheat

The Utrecht Blue has begun to 'lodge' (fall down) quite badly,
and there are some signs of vermin damage.
However, all the wheat and oats are so close to being ready to harvest that
we'll probably cut them soon, anyway (well in advance of our Sept 5 party, I'm afraid)

The fruit has begun ripening on this amazing 'volunteer' tomato plant,
which grew from seed from last year's tomatoes....
I won't tell you how amazing they are, you'll just have to come out and taste one for yourself.

Flax and marigold: ephemeral blue flowers and hardy orange ones.
The flax flowers open in the morning and the petals fall by the afternoon, so I missed the chance to see them in bloom.
The marigolds got a reprieve from their weekly beheading ritual this week because I ran out of time;
I'll get to them when I'm back from my trip on August 20th.

Vigorous 'volunteer' amaranth -- last year, Sharon Kallis and Karen Barnaby harvested
and prepared the amaranth that was grown (of which this is the offspring) for the Harvest Party.
I have no idea how to harvest or use this behemoth, but I sure can't help but respect it.

Here I am standing in the flax. Last week it had just begun to flower;
and this week, flowering seems almost finished and each stalk has several small, plump green seed heads.

Our flax is nice and tall, and beginning to go golden at the roots.
It won't be long before it's ready to harvest!
(But I hope that it can wait til September 5th)

The Garden in the fourth week of July...

Some cooler temperatures and rain this past week, especially over the last day or so -- there was a heavy rainfall warning for yesterday evening, so we skipped our time at Trimble Park, did a quick check-in on the garden, and then moved up to the house to settle into the lounge. 

Last week was sunny and hot enough to dry marigolds in my backyard --
here is my daughter's rabbit, Gizz, testing them for flavour.

The big Catalonian tension trays I've made this summer are great for drying --
but with the clouds and moisture of this past week, I had to move everything indoors and resort to using my dehydrator.
Nancy Turner's books on First Nations food & plant technology make many references to things being dried over the fire -- and in this climate, I can appreciate why.

This photo is fuzzy, but I had to include it because I was so amazed at the nasturtiums --
last week they only had one or two blossoms, and this week, they're a riot of multiple hues!

The wheat is looking bedraggled now, but it's getting so close to harvest that I think it'll be Ok.
The heads are beautiful and coming out in their namesake colours -- Utrecht blue, Black Einkorn.

The flax is so tall! I'm astounded by its loveliness and vitality.

It's in full flower now -- right on the mark, or perhaps a little ahead of our  hoped-for timing.

The extraordinary heads of the 'Utrecht Blue'

The hazel stick continues to do so well! And we were convinced that hazel wouldn't sprout from cuttings....

Evidence of last week's raid on the Chinook by little thieves-in-the-night.
But maybe the eagles got them, or the owls? because it didn't seem that there had been any new damage this week.

Spinning & Rope-Making July 23

Just a little reminder that tomorrow's theme in the garden is 'Spinning & Rope-Making' -- come on out for show-and-tell if you're already into this, and come on out if you're not into it yet, to try your hand at a 'rake-straw spinner', drop spindle, or a mini rope machine.
Here's my "Ropes and Braids" Pinterest Board for inspiration, and below you'll find a favourite historical video clip of a couple of cowboys using a 'rake-straw spinner' to make horsehair rope.
Hope to see you soon -- Wednesday July 23, 7-9pm in the Flax Field behind Aberthau Mansion, just off Trimble and North West Marine by Locarno Beach.

'Harvest Home' Friday Sept 5, 4:30 til late

Brian Jones tells lots of jokes and makes many wry comments -- which is sort of a cover for the really important stuff he says.

One of those important things Brian talks about sometimes is the 'Harvest Home' festival of his heritage. With 'corn dollies' and decorations, music, Morris Dancing, processions, and practices around the harvesting of the last sheaf of grain, Brian's family, their neighbours and their ancestors demonstrated gratitude for the harvest, maintained the integrity of the social fabric that made the intense work of the harvest season successful, and guarded the seed that would be next years' crop.

There are many harvest festivals, even some that are similarly called 'Harvest Home' and 'Ingathering' -- Christian, Jewish, and other -- observed throughout the world. In a quick survey of Google and Youtube results from these terms, I saw a lot of people who were getting together to engage in artistic and cultural practices related to gratitude and social cohesion; but of course, there were not many references to actual work, nor the direct connection to agriculture that probably formed the original basis for most (if not all?) of these events.

Just for interest, here's an old reel showing a pre-industrial harvest process in Britain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcyzAIkMwrg

Brian's father creating a 'corn dolly' for a harvest festival

Photographs of Brian participating in a traditional harvest, using a scythe

Page from a treatise on the customs of the area where Brian was born,
Shopshire folk-lore, a sheaf of gleanings, Volume 3 by George Frederic Jackson
highlighted text: "...as William Holmes observed, 'different places have different customs,' and this usage, even if not confined to the Bishop's Castle neighbourhood, was certainly by no means so wide-spread as the ceremony of 'Cutting the Gander's neck off', which also was practised at the end of the reaping. The neck, or 'Gonder's neck', was a group of perhaps twenty ears of corn, left standing and knotted together in the middle of the field when all the rest was 'down'. The men, standing at from ten to twenty paces distance, threw their sickles at it in turn, the leading reaper first, and the rest in order due. Whoever succeeded in cutting off the neck was reckoned the 'best man' and carried it home in triumph to the master's wife, expecting an extra 'mug o' drink' as his reward. The 'Missus,' who received this offering, was supposed to keep it in the house 'for good luck' until the next harvest-time came round."

Well, we're also going to stage our own 'Harvest Home' event, and just for kicks, we're actually going to start it off by inviting everyone to HARVEST (work in the garden) with us. We will also have music to accompany us there, and then a procession to the 'home' (Discovery Cafe), where we will be able to order supper and refreshments (** cash only), and enjoy more dancing (Tiddley Cove Morris), music (Rogue Folk Club) and, of course, wheat weaving and linen play and other ways of being creative that are connected to the land.

Plan to join us!
4:30pm in the Garden behind Aberthau Mansion, off Trimble and North West Marine Drive
6:15pm Procession from the garden down by Locarno Beach and back up to Discovery Cafe
6:30pm at Discovery Cafe

The Garden in the third week of July...

Another week of sun and heat, like a fairytale  -- though the spell is about to be broken by the cooling temperatures and the rain in the forecast for this weekend, much to the chagrin of the organizers of the Folk Music Festival, I'm sure.
Brian and I had a quiet night in the garden; I did my usual garden rounds of photographs and beheading the marigolds, plus a little spinning practice on the wheel that I've borrowed; Brian watered the flax and worked on a major wheat-weaving project he started a week or so ago. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with it.
The flax was on the cusp of flowering, so it must be in bloom now -- I hope the rain this weekend doesn't discourage it. The Utrecht Blue wheat has lodged a bit more, probably due to being next to the flax and getting too much water, so we didn't water through that channel this time. A mouse or some other little pest has been visiting the Chinook wheat, which is the most ripe, running up the stems and snipping off the heads, and then eating the fallen heads and leaving the chaff all over the ground.
Behind the scenes, we're working on the organizing for our Harvest Home celebration on September 5th, putting together a poster and coordinating with the musicians. I look forward to sharing more with you soon!

The wheat is about 5' tall, and the flax must have grown 6' in the last week
and is just about ready to flower

Some of the nascent flax blossoms

I love the texture of the stems of the flax, like a bright green forest

Some of the flax began to lodge between the flax beds --
maybe just erosion off the sides of the beds?

The Utrecht Blue wheat leans over to its neighbours,
the oats and Black Einkorn, forming a small tunnel

I thought the nasturtiums were a bit of a long shot, planted into almost pure sand at the north
side of the garden, but they're catching up with the rest of the garden and have even set flowers.

Brian working on his big project, while Georgia checks out his display

One element of Brian's display --
I love the old woodcut image at the top, of the farmer reaping.

Brian concentrates.

The Garden in the second week of July

Another week of clear skies, sun, and warmth. The garden continues to do well; no more grain has lodged, and to my novice eye, the flax looks like it's within a week or two of flowering. The 'ears' on the Chinook wheat are starting to loose their bright green colour and mellow into gold, though the stalks on all the grains are still green. I look forward to seeing what the colours of the stalks will be when they are ripe -- our friends at the Cascadia Society in North Vancouver planted some Red Fife wheat early enough in the spring that it is well ripened already, and the stalks do indeed have a red cast.

Brian keeps quietly telling me about the 'Harvest Home' ritual, and gradually it's sinking in...
this is the 'corn dolly' he made for an event over a decade ago, still with him.

Georgia stands in the path between the Utrecht Blue wheat and the flax,
showing how tall everything has grown.
I couldn't imagine this, when we started with bare earth in the spring!

A beautifully-composed picture of the sun on the flax, wheat and marigolds
by Paul.

Lynn helps me clip back the marigolds --
it now takes me about 40 minutes to clip about 60% of the heads
from the 250 plants we planted in the spring.

The marigold heads look lovely on one of the Catalonian tension trays
that I made after the workshop at the Urban Weaver Studio with
Josep and Magda Mercader
--- and tossing them onto a tray is faster than trying to place them in a bag.

Paul took this photo of Lynn and I holding trays of the marigold blossoms.

Oliver and I were delighted with the rich plum colour of the fleece
from the solar dye jar we made up last week.

Oliver poses proudly with Brian and Paul, who did a little jamming.
Oliver managed to sweet-talk Brian into letting him have a turn with Brian's accordion --
a budding musician with promise!