East Barnard Linen Fair represents our vision to share with the community this amazing plant, Linum usitatissimum, commonly known as flax.

 

Used for thousands of years by humanity the world over, flax fibre has countless applications, historically, contemporaneously, and undoubtedly, in the future By sharing our experience, (such as sourcing seed, sowing rates, judging when to pull, when to turn, when is it time to bring in, how do you tell if you have good quality fibre, what is rhetting, how do you rhett, how do you store, how do you process), we hope to spread the growing and processing of flax in our local community and beyond. Linum usitatissimum has so much to teach us.

 

At Green Mountain Linen, we grow our flax with no fertiliser or irrigation. Flax is valuable: there is an enormous global market for flax. We can produce a valuable, marketable crop such as flax while practicing sustainable agriculture. There is so much craft in growing, processing, spinning, weaving, sewing linen, The East Barnard Linen Fair is a celebration of all aspects of linen.

 

Participate in flax harvesting

Learn how to transform the dried flax plant to a spinnable fiber

Watch spinning and weaving demonstrations

Try hands on processing of flax with historic hand tools

Engage with makers and artists-in-residence

Enjoy delicious food, available on-site

This is a family-friendly event

 

There is so much craft in growing, processing, spinning, weaving, sewing linen, The East Barnard Linen Fair is a celebration of all aspects of linen.

– Robin Maynard Seaver – Co Founder