Flax is a circular, environmentally important fiber seen as a key player for small growers shifting to addressing climate change. Scaling For Flax Sake is a redistribution-of-resources-focused project that uses skill sharing and data collection to benefit the Southern New England Fibershed conducted in 2024-2025. Hawk and Handsaw farm enters a strategic partnership with BIPOC run Wood Spoon Farm to complete infrastructure on the farm facilitating for continued land-equity and resource sharing, part of H&Hs future programing, while offering deep knowledge and skill-exchange Wood Spoon Farm around the growing of 100 square meters (1076 sq ft) of flax. Through community meetings and resource analysis this project focuses on diversifying RI’s farming and producer community, but does so with a project that researches and compiles a toolkit for how to create communal, mechanized flax production in its  fibershed. With the outputs created through this project, the project team will be able to propose a realistic pricing model for seeking investment in a future, collaborative, flax processing mill with applicable machines and rentable, shareable resources for flax farmers in the region.

The project is a strategic partnership between Hawk and Handsaw Farm (Kidder Gowen and Horus Kelley) offering a land-access opportunity to BIPOC run Wood Spoon Farm starting in the fall of 2024. The project “Scaling For Flax Sake” builds on a beta project created by Tracy Jonsson-Laboy with the help of the RI Council for the Humanities in 2024 called “For Flax Sake.” 

Sclaing For flax Sake is a continuation of the project “For Flax Sake.”

For Flax Sake was a skills-development project conducted March-December 2024. The project encompassed documenting the tacit knowledge of flax growing, harvesting and production towards an educational pamphlet shared with urban growers and non-profits in the New England community-garden space. In collaboration with community partners and BIPOC-land stewardship and access organizations, and with expert flax knowers from the South County Museum and textile history and conservation field, For Flax Sake has as its outcome a 5 square meter flax field and a toolkit for how to grow a small plot of flax in a visual format targeting a new generation of BIPOC land stewards and farmers. The toolkit will be shared widely and for free as an advocacy, practice, and awareness tool. 

Hawk and Handsaw Farm (H&HF) is instrumental in helping social practice researcher and textile artist Tracy Jonsson-Laboy, founder of Wood Spoon Farm and experienced flax grower, spinner and weaver, produce the For Flax Sake Project. We will utilize the flax grown in this project to inform the scaling project.

For Flax Sake is made possible with help from the RI Humanities Council, and the Braiding Seed mini-grant.

Accordion ContentaFlax is an ancient plant grown for its oil-rich seed and for its strong and durable fibers, which
when spun and woven produce a fiber called linen. Large scale agricultural growing of flax in the
US is for the time being limited to primarily flax-seed oil for use in paints, as well as seeds for
animal feed. An emerging interest in the growing of flax for fiber usage is fueled by multiple
small scale growers without the resources to purchase the out-of-production fiber harvesting and
milling equipment that is needed for linen production in the USA. Industrial production of linen
is now centered in Mediterranean Europe and Asia, but small scale growers are increasing in the
USA, especially with the growing investment in bast-fiber product production from hemp. The
creation of linen was phased out during the industrial revolution, as imports from mainly Ireland
became the norm, phasing out the high price of hand-made cottage industries. Many Americans
are now seeking sources for American made linen, but growers face limited opportunities for
processing their harvest due to lack of flax-processing mills. Mills abroad do not accommodate
for the current yield sizes, requiring quantities exceeding what US based farmers can produce.
There is evidence of flax linen harvesting and processing techniques being used by growers and
producers to process other bast fibers, notably hemp. This versatility adds to the value of creating
a collaborative bast fiber community. Hemp production in the USA is currently ever increasing
with demand of CBD products but as that market reaches its plateau farmers can look to the
production of hemp for fiber as an alternative market and could be a perfect complement to the
production of Flax linen fiber.

Riding the momentum of the partnership, H&HF and Wood Spoon Farm look towards preparing, in fall 2024, for the 2025 growing season for Scaling the For Flax Sake (the SFFS Project) project. This scaled project will produce a larger sample size of flax facilitating qualitative research to produce numeric findings that will help us create a replicable and scalable collaborative access or sufficiency-driven business model that we will share openly. Creating processing access for regional flax growers will have implications for the Southern New England Fibershed, the partnering organizations, and regional flax growers and producers.

Scaling For Flax Sake is made possible with support form Ocean Hour Farm.