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[unicornduke]

 Meal planning for this week

I want to use a roast I've got in the freezer, let me go check I actually have that right now. 

I've got my pick of a roast, stew meat, tenderloin and ground meat in my freezer. I've got sweet potatoes but unfortunately all my regular potatoes have sprouted and are very wrinkly. I'll have to pick more up when I visit my parents next week. 

Maybe I'll do a stew of some sort. 

oh dang I gotta get to the farmers market before it gets too busy. ugh. 

I also need to clean out the fridge, I've got leftovers that I left too long and now I can't freeze them becuase of dubious quality. 

Comments

[dragonlady7]

I'm gonna have to break down and buy a commercial chicken this week, I think. At least the co-op here has local ones, though they're Suspiciously Inexpensive. (They also have tiny two-pound ones. Dude marveled over them and I was like. Uh. Those are probably four week chickens. I don't want to contemplate how on earth you eviscerate them.)

By the way Jean has now forwarded my email address to three different museum curators and is preparing to book me appointments to view the flax equipment at at least two different museums so I guess I'm into this now!!! LOL. Let me know if there's anything you specifically want photos of. I guess since I'm now researching this I might as well bully Annie into planting me a flax plot. Listen, they have a combine, someone might as well use it, how hard could it be??? (rolls around laughing in i-don't-even-know-how-to-drive-a-tractorese)

[unicornduke]

If they've got anything beyond the basic hand stuff, pictures of those would be incredible although I don't know if they would or not. If they don't, pictures of the breaking and scutching stuff is best because they're the most complex to build. maybe a size comparison of various hackles if they have differnet sizes

I also read your message but am just getting back into replying to things. thanks for contacting her! I found the stuff from the Landis Valley and I'm going to order a pound or two from them and we can split. They say a pound can do a 20x20 plot.

a combine isn't going to actually work for fiber flax to get the highest quality. you actually pull them up by the roots to harvest. if you combined you would chop 3-4 inches at minimum from the fiber. they;ve got very shallow root systems and are very easy to pull.

[dragonlady7]

It's true, I did read that about combines.
Mother Earth Living said 4x4' would give you enough fiber to make a basket and enough seeds to make one batch of crackers. You probably read that article too, LOL.
It also said that if you harvest for the best quality fiber you don't get many seeds. I had pondered maybe harvesting in two batches, one to get fiber and the other to get seeds. Might be worth an experiment?

I got an email from the educational director at a local (out here) historic site who said her equipment was made from plans she bought from here, and her son had done the construction to those specifications. That's one set of the tools Jean offered to take me to see, so I'll do that, for sure. I should go see that historic site anyway, it sounds like it's up my alley, LOL.

[unicornduke]

It might be worth trying the separate harvest. I harvested mine with 75% of the seeds were mature mainly because I wanted more seeds to grow out this year. I think the other thing is that I doubt I would know what a good quality finished flax would look like. I suspect right now, the quality of rhetting and processing is going to make a bigger difference in fiber quality that we can tell. I do have about 2 oz fiber flax I finally found at the NY Sheep and Wool after some incredible thorough digging so we can at least compare to that.

The fiber flax book that I backed on kickstarter is printed and the person should be shipping within a few weeks so that should give us some more ideas.

Historic sites are SUPER COOL. That is a link I've found, I should probably purchase those

[dragonlady7]

I mean-- flax seed isn't crazy expensive, it doesn't seem, but it still seems like it'd be worthwhile to save seeds. Also I was considering for the future that it might be worth exploring using the flaxseed to feed the chickens and pigs on the farm, so it might be worth doing a few experiments to see what kind of yields are possible. I'd have to talk that over with Zack tho, he might not be working on his grow-your-own-feed project as much, or might not have flax on his radar for that. (People badly want the animals not to be fed on soy, but it's industry standard. I've no idea what kind of nutritional profile flaxseed gives, and I think it's all marketing to feed chickens flaxseed and there's no proof it really improves the Omega-3 profile in the eggs, but it is marketing.

If you want, I'll buy the plans, or see if I can get a copy some other way (if some of these places have them, still, from when they made theirs, or something) (not like I wouldn't support artisans, just, y'know). Though, the place that sells the plans also sells flax stricks and tops, imported from Sweden.

(Dude has this low-key plan to go visit his ancestral homeland in Latvia sometime and I was like "if we go there can we try to get a tour of an industrial flax facility in Lithuania while we're over there" and he was like "LOL")

The one historic site, she kept saying Lancaster, which is one of the southtowns just out of Buffalo, and finally I looked it up and it's LANCASTER PA that is NOT CLOSE. Ha!

[unicornduke]

Seed isn't expensive, it's just that there's not many places to get it. I've got five or so that I can name off the top of my head that sell named varieties instead of just generic flax that may or may not be fiber. That's so few!

The other thing is that the fiber flax varieties are going to have different properties than the ones bred for flaxseed, so they might not be as high in nutritional value. I know for sure that they are a little smaller and the plants produce a lot less.

lol I was surprised when you said there was one near you. Maybe I can make the trek south, Lancaster is only ~2 hours from my parents.

Let's wait on the plans, the book might have some ideas on that although I don't know!

[dragonlady7]

Oh, there are two sites near me! Hull House is what confused me, because it is in Lancaster, NY, it just isn't the one named after Lancaster. They're the ones that sent the link to the place to buy the plans, and that Jean has offered to take me to visit. It is a 25-minute drive from my house.
The other one, where Jean has periodically worked, is formerly known as the Amherst Museum, and is now the Buffalo Niagara Somethingorother Village. She was in charge of the flax-growing there, I think, for some years at least; it's also about 25 minutes from my house.

She also told me to contact the curator at the Cooperstown Farmer's Museum, which is where as a child I saw a bunch of flax-processing demos, though the equipment wasn't on display anymore last time I visited, and I do plan to contact him at some point, but I'm going to ask my mom if she still knows anyone there too, because that's where they went to school together.
That's actually closer to Troy than here, though.
(If you've never been there, it is a good time. We used to go as kids and we'd also go to the art museum across the street, as a twofer. It's pretty cool. Gorgeous scenery!)
Mom bought me a little souvenir packet of flax seeds from the giftshop there a year or two ago and I misplaced it, but I bet I could get a larger thing of seeds from them if I really wanted. I do want to talk to the dude in charge, I bet he's got some insights.

And yeah-- you're right that seed-bearing varieties might not be ideal for fiber processing, but if I make the start of growing flax maybe that'll be something they pick up on doing. I dunno!

I watched this video on weed control for flax growing and am imagining I'll probably just have to get out there with a scuffle hoe, IDK. Or maybe we can do the no-till cardboard thing, maybe I'll convince Annie to do the flax as a border for the new area of flower gardens, which she's got under silage tarps now to solarize the grass. I think I have to go there and talk to her.
Flax needs to be planted, like... April?? I have some time to work this out.

[unicornduke]

Neato! Maybe I'll go down to Cooperstown, that sounds really cool.

April is about right for planting, with all the spring crops, peas, carrots, etc. They can take a light frost. There's some saying about 100 hours to germination, 100 days to harvest for flax, not sure how accurate that is. I think I pulled mine in July last year.

Weeding is going to be a big pain. I think I'm going to do mine in rows rather than broadcast because I hand weeded my little 10x10 broadcast patch (planted too thin) and holy shit was it a pain in the butt. The plants are so thin, they don't shade at all and they're such tiny tiny seedlings. I want to say they were a little slow to germinate but don't quote me on that.