Country diary: Facing the flax – this city was once built on the stuff | Mary Montague

Botanic Meadow, Belfast: I visit my local community garden, and the woman who has returned to growing this graceful crop that eventually becomes linen

In my hands is a brownish-grey hank of flax yarn. I twine it between my fingers to feel the thread’s strength and admire the fibres’ diffuse sheen. Along with fruit and vegetables, it’s the produce of our Friends of the Field community garden. It’s also the work of Merle, whose love of textile crafts has led her creative process right back to growing flax.

Flax yarn is used to make linen, a fabric that is folded into Belfast’s history. During the 19th century, the city was a global powerhouse of linen production, but the advent of synthetic textiles contributed to the industry’s decline. So, despite its former importance to the Northern Irish economy, I’d never actually seen flax until I saw Merle’s crop.

At summer’s height, her small plot swayed with flax’s graceful lime-green stems and delicate blue flowers. Over the season, the stems yellowed. Petals dropped, leaving little bonnets of seed pods. In late August, we pulled the crop. The plant’s shallow roots made our task relatively easy, but for previous generations of farm workers, pulling large fields of flax was back-breaking work. When we were done, we left the beets (bundles) of flax to dry in a polytunnel.

Now the flax is retting, a decomposition process that macerates the stems. Traditionally this was done by immersing the flax in water, usually in a flax dam. Merle prefers to use the slower practice of dew-retting, which minimises any organic pollution. She has spread the dried beets on open ground so the flax can soften in the dew and rain over several weeks. Then it will be dried again.

After that, Merle will break and scutch (beat) the flax stems to release their fibres, which she’ll hackle (comb out) until they’re fine enough to spin into new yarn (and so, through all these steps, such fabulous language is spoken again). Finally, Merle weaves the yarn into fresh linen on her table-loom at home.

Merle also shares her yarn with other members of the community garden. For her, spinning and weaving and fabric-making is a way of threading together all the connections: of community and tradition; of earth and weather. I lift the hank she gave me to my nose. It smells clean, grassy and slightly peppery.

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