Priča o lanu III - priprema za namakanje / Linen story III - preparation for soaking

It seems that the linen story has attracted quite a lot of interest, therefore, I am speeding up with the story about the next phase.

Well, once harvested, we have brought all the flax bundles (298 of them!) back home, and put them into a room to dry for some days. Since most of us involved in the harvesting had just about no idea what to do next, we have called in a local expert to come and show us how to proceed. He was just so incredibly passionate while explaining how to it, and was happy to see someone doing it again, after decades of noone planting it in the area.

We had to leave the harvest for about a week to dry a little bit before preparing it for soaking. Each bundle had to be tied on two places, and shortened. We decided to use the axe for shortening, as it was the fastest way to do it. So... you cut the root part which becomes fertiliser, while the top part with the seeds is saved for further processing and extracting the seeds. This is how the bundles looked before and after. Five/six bundles are then tied together in a bigger bunch which will be put into the soaking basin.

This is how the seeds are looking while still within the plant. That had to dry for a while before we could extract the lovely, tiny, brown linen seeds:

The fourth part of the story is coming soon, with more details about the soaking process.

Priča o lanu je privukla dosta interesa, i zato žurim sa slijedećim nastavkom.
Dakle, jednom počupane, sve smo lanene snopove (njih 298!) donijeli kući i ostavili u zatvorenoj prostoriji da se još neko vrijeme suše. Kako većina nas nije imala pojma što i kako dalje, odlučili smo pozvati lokalnog stručnjaka da nam objasni i pokaže šta nam je dalje činiti. Stigao je susjed Ivek, sav sretan i prestretan, ushićen da nam može pokazati nastavak prerade. Sretan i zbog toga da se netko ponovo primio sadnje lana, jer se već desetljećima u kraju nitko s time ne bavi.
Dakle, nakon što se lan odmorio i posušio nekih tjedan dana, morali smo ga pripremiti za slijedeću fazu – močenje. Svaki snop je trebao biti zavezan na dva mjesta – pri dnu i vrhu, a onda skraćen. Odlučili smo ih skraćivati sa sjekirom kao najbržom metodom. Dakle, reže se podnožje snopa (nekih 15-tak cm od korijena) i to se baca, te vrh snopa na kojem su ostale lanene sjemenke. Ovo su slike kako su snopići izgledali prije i poslije rezanja. Nakon toga se 5-6 snopova veže zajedno u veći snop koji će se onda stavljati u bazen na močenje. Priča o namakanju slijedi u slijedećem, četvrtom nastavku.