The children of a farm were firmly scheduled helpers in the farming year. Many tasks related to flax cultivation were in the hands of children. For many a farmer's child, the work was a chore, but it also marked transitions. Depending on their age, the budding farmer or young farmer's wife was assigned other tasks. Of course, this also made them proud.
On the day of the wedding, the bride's household goods and trousseau chests were brought to the newlyweds' new home, not quietly and secretly, but with a large court. Until the 1960s, it was customary in the Mühlviertel for the bride to receive flax and linen as a wedding gift from her family. It was a treasure, her very personal possession, a life insurance policy that the woman could cash in when the need was greatest.
No farmhouse in the upper Mühlviertel or the Bavarian Forest was complete without various figures of saints. A crucifix watched over the family in the corner of the room, the Virgin Mary was often found in a small niche under the gable and above the dining table there was a...
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It is impossible to imagine a healthy diet without flaxseed, even in many a medicine cabinet. Those who want to experiment with flax for the first time are therefore often inclined to simply plant the muesli bean. This can also work wonderfully if you want to harvest oil flax. For an optimum fibre yield, you should stick to established fibre flax varieties. Experimental and above all patient gardeners can also select their own personal flax variety.
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If you want to harvest textiles in your own garden year after year, you don't have to be a big farmer. At best, 10 m2 of flax is enough to produce 2.5 kilos of flax fibres and up to 4 m2 of linen. You don't even need to have particularly green fingers, as flax is an extremely frugal contemporary and is also beautiful. So get to work with the shovels.
When I sit at the spinning wheel on a cold autumn evening and spin flax, I enjoy the silence and take pleasure in my hobby. Spinning is relaxation for me. When the women of the Mühlviertel sat at the spinning wheel 100 years ago, it was work. For some it was nice work, but spinning rarely had anything to do with idleness. A few newspaper articles between 1912 and 1929 and a lot of maths give a good picture of the reality of flax work.
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