Our first speaker of 2024 was Helen Keys.  Helen and her husband Charlie Mallon run Mallon Farm out the Pomeroy Road. Previously this was mostly grassland with a small sucker herd. When they took over Mallon Farm, Charlie and Helen had other careers and did not have time to look after livestock. They both joined the Nature Friendly Farming Network. Representatives from NFFN visited the farm and were very positive noting the variety of habitats they had supporting wildlife.

Helen showed us a huge sheet of wildflowers she had identified on the farm. She also played us footage from a single trail camera showing rabbits, badgers, foxes, otter, snipe, deer and a mouse!

Charlie and Helen run a “Source-grow Business”-collecting food produced on local farms and supplying restaurants. Helen explained there is also a growing demand for foraged food eg. Blackberries, Hazelnuts and Gorse flowers—the latter for making tea—there is a lot of plucking to get a few grams of Whin Flowers!

Charlie is a sculptor and tried unsuccessfully to source locally produced linen to package his bronze sculptures for transport. Then they realised flax had been grown on the farm in the past and decided to grow their own. Helen showed us an old document reporting that flax grown in the  Cookstown area had been considered the best quality in Ireland!

Charlie and Helen’s first year growing flax was not so successful—wrong variety sown at the wrong density at the wrong time—resulted in a field of redshank. Secret is to prepare the ground twice with a further chain harrowing just before planting to set the weeds back and sow thickly with an old-style fiddle. Fred Faulkner was present at our meeting. Fred previously worked with flax and is a great repository of knowledge about flax growing and processing. Fred recommended sowing at a density of 3 bushels per acre. He also emphasised that flax impoverishes the ground and must be grown in crop rotation.

Helen went on to explain flax grows up tall quickly and chokes out the weeds. It takes 100 days to grow. In mid-July the flax plants produce stunning blue flowers in succession for a 3-week period, each flower only lasting a day or maybe just a few hours if the weather is hot. There is intense pollinator activity during the three weeks of flax flowering.

When the flax is ripe it is harvested by hand. Helen and Charlie get a cheerful band of volunteers to help with this each year. Then the flax is submerged in water to “rett”it. This process aims to break down the outer woody pectin exposing the linen core. Historically retting was carried out in the “lint hole”- an artificial deep pond dug out in a low-lying area of the farm. Helen and Charlie use an upcycled cheese vat to do the retting. How long to leave the flax submerged is an acquired skill. Usually about 11 nights. The farmer should pick up some of the submerged flax and see if the outer woody bits separate easily from the inner fibre core. The flax is then taken out of the water and spread out to dry—a particularly smelly job. Care has to be taken with the disposal of the waste-water as it is a very toxic pollutant in waterways but when spread on land with a slurry tanker it acts as a potent fertiliser.

Next comes scutching – beating handfuls of flax to separate the woody outer bits from the linen core. Charlie and Helen have restored a 1940’s scutching machine powered by electric motors –this is a safe machine with the beating mechanism well away from the operator unlike the rotating paddle scutching machines of old. Fred reported that in the past very few scutchers finished life with a full set of fingers!

After scutching comes hackling - pulling the flax through a comb like apparatus to remove any remaining woody bits and to orientate and straighten out the linen fibres. The next stage is spinning. But all spinning machines in Ireland are gone. Only hand spinning is left now.  Charlie and Helen hope to get a spinning machine restored in the future.

After spinning comes weaving and beetling that is hammering the woven linen cloth to close the holes between threads. Weaving and beetling is still carried out at Clarks of Upperlands.

Charlie and Helen sell scutched flax to those running hand spinning classes, also to the film industry for wigs. A paper maker has been using it to make lamp shades and recently made a raincoat from linen! Car manufacturers are now looking to flax to replace carbon fibre. There is now great interest in the potential use of natural fibres such as linen in both fashion and industry. Flax is both “nature and carbon” friendly. Could flax come back in future as the valuable cash crop it once was in Ulster! Growing flax would have great benefit to the overall carbon footprint of farming here. Helen explained since changing from livestock production to growing flax their farm has been turned from a carbon emitter to a carbon sequestering unit.

Helen finished by encouraging membership of the Nature Friendly Farming Network. The NFFN are open to membership from both farmers and non-farmers.

Helen’s talk stimulated a lively question and answer session. This was followed by a vote of thanks proposed by Alison Kirk on behalf of CWT. We also noted and congratulated Helen on the MBE awarded to her in the recent New Year Honours list for Innovation in Farming.

Summary of Helen Keys talk by Ernest Hunter