The linen project is now (end of June 2012) at a sensitive point where it could become robust enough to succeed independently of any one individual, or it could fall apart, quite possibly with bitterness and recriminations.

Here’s how it could succeed: We find an organizational form that engages people’s various motives strongly and focuses their energy specifically on doing the work necessary to producing cloth. The main prize will not be the cloth itself, but the organizational form, which can be applied to a range of other urgently needed projects developing local productive capacity. “We” means, of course, a group which includes “you”. So “we” aren’t going to find this organizational form unless “you” are trying to find it.

Here’s how this project could fail: The absence of enough committed people could allow crucial tasks to remain undone. Weeds could rage over our field. Come fall we could not have all the means prepared to ripple, store, ret, and dress (dressing means braking, scutching and hackling) our huge crop. So it could rot in the field, or languish in storage (the way my 2010 crop did when Transition had it.)

A less wasteful alternative that has crossed my mind is this:

I could invite the many fiber-arts hobbyists who are excited about flax, to divide up the field at harvest time and each bring home a fraction of the crop. Then they could each store and process their own bit, each at her own pace, using whatever rustic tools and methods they can pull together. This would at least develop widespread familiarity with the material, building a cohort of people some of whom might advance to more productive mechanized methods.

I started the idea in the last paragraph with “I could…” rather than “We could…” to make a point. Legally that whole flax crop is mine, from my contract with the landowner. Several people have made major contributions to growing it, and to building our knowledge of retting and further processing. They did this in the (correct) assumption that I would prefer that everyone gets their fair share of the glory from this as an activist achievement, and of the income from this as a possible niche industry.

But it would seem that many are making a further assumption, that I will figure out how to apportion these rewards fairly, and construct the system for doing so, all by myself. Yet this is a huge intellectual challenge – the central one in our overarching task of showing the way for other projects like this to succeed. I want some help figuring this out. I have some ideas, but I want other people to develop and post ideas too.

My ideas, which I have developed over years, I have attempted to:

1. Identify the forms the decline might take, and their likelihoods and timescales
2. Identify skills, tools and relationships that our community will need.
3. Identify the obstacles and difficulties that stand in the way.
4. Identify the human motives which could be engaged in overcoming these difficulties.
5. Identify effective ways of engaging those motives

These difficult questions are each open to many answers, so having many people discussing them would bring out more useful insights. But I am unaware of any groups or individuals in Victoria who have attempted what seems to me very basic groundwork in resilience activism. I don’t want to do this alone.

Billy, 386-7984

Hello fellow flaxing folk,
Here is the list of things I am bring to the SHAS Demonstration/Workparty
20 bundles of retted flax straw
1 medium hackle (needs to be clamped to a table-I will bring clamps)
1 fine floral frog hackle (I use it as a final draw through before spinning)
bag of seed bols (do we want to give or sell them to folks?)
My spinning wheel (for my use to demonstration)
My weaving loom (with local linen thread warp and weft)
Some spindles for folks to try
stricks just to get me started spinning

Everyone ready to help out? Here we go!

Hi – I’m trying to label my pictures and need to know what the name of the flax field at Elk Lake is being referred to.   Brookleigh field,  or, N. end of Elk Lake, or , 2012 field, or what?

please let me know – barb

Hi – I’ve tried elsewhere to find out what we are going to call the field where the flax is now growing.  What are we going to call it – The field north of Elk Lake, Brookleigh Rd field, 2012 field???  I’d like to label my pictures with the accepted name.  Also Billy mentions Red Damsel Farm – where is that?

A day or two of warm rain have made our seeds germinate. They know what to do now. We could leave them unattended for the next hundred days and would get a big crop. Of course, we’ll get a taller crop if we irrigate the field, and pull up weeds. Ken and I (and anyone else who wants to come) are going out on Sunday (May 27th) to start designing a sprinkler system. Also we need a plan for weeding with the least trampling.

But in general there is less intense work, and more flexibility about when it is done, over the summer. Here are some things we need to work on in this time:

1) Organize the harvest, rippling, and starting the fall retting. This could all happen on one day, with a large group of volunteers.

2) Organize the fall retting and subsequent collection and storage. With these done, this crop is out of the field and we move from biological to mechanical processes.

3) Prepare systems for storing, braking, scutching and hackling the retted crop. With these tasks done, we will have stricks (bundles of fibre) which are easy to store and easy to sell. So the big subsequent task of getting from fiber to cloth can take its own time.

4) Consider and discuss how to build on the successes we’ve already had, and successes to come, in order to energize other projects that develop tools and skills for locally productive industry. That question includes how to manage this website, and other questions of control over our membership, communications, funds, and identity.

Please comment on these points!

billy@inhabitvictoria, 250-386-7984

The field was lightly tilled by a tractor two weeks ago. Our chemical-free strategy has been to let grass re-sprout and then till again with a rototiller, to reduce the competition for our flax. This secondary tilling is mostly done; we can till more Saturday, or avoid noise by just planting the part that is ready. Brian acquired a seeding device, and has its use figured out, but could use some help bringing seed to it and helping pull it. After seeding the seeds need about half and inch of soil raked over them, and that soil needs to be compacted. Both tasks require more effort than spreading the seed itself. Bring soil rakes, not light leaf rakes. I have a heavy roller there already, and will bring a tamper, for compacting.

If you need a ride from the bus stop on the Pat Bay highway at Sayward Road, or the Elk Lake parking lot, to the field, phone Beatrice’s cell phone 250-884-5252 Saturday morning. If you have a cell phone you can call from there, otherwise call before you start out. Or you can just walk or (if you brought a bike) cycle a mile west from the Pat Bay highway, to 536 Brookleigh.

If you need a ride out there from town, add a comment to this posting. They don’t appear instantly; I have to do something to make them appear onscreen, but I will check often.

This will be upliffting! It’s a beautiful place, the weather will be pleasant, and good work attracts good company.    I’ll be there by 9AM , and will organize people as they trickle in.

Billy@inhabitvictoria.org, 250-386-7984

PS Here is the original notice:

We are going to start planting our flax crop on Saturday. Our field is on Brookleigh Road, on the north edge of Elk Lake, at the last property before the forest, on the north side of the straight stretch running west from the Pat Bay Highway. It has two driveways, numbered 536 and 544, but if you are coming by car we may need you to park at the park back by the highway and we can shuttle you to the farm. We’ll put up a cell phone number for that purpose on inhabitvictoria.org by Friday. We will shuttle people to the park for toilet breaks too.

I’ll be there from 9AM on. Bring soil rakes, and of course food and water, sun hats, work clothes, and whatever else you need to be productive. Cameras, too.