A freshly woven ash-gray canvas has a subtle silver hue, and this shade will stay until the day when it is finally whitewashed and put away into the girl box.
In March - April, the days are getting brighter and longer. An eager weaver, as already mentioned, weaves a day's work a "wall" of canvas with a length of six or seven meters. Two "walls" make the "end," out of the "end" come out seven to ten towels.
There are incessant sounds of the reed and the creaking of pedals in the entire Lent. A very thin yarn is woven initially; this canvas will be used to make underwear, shirts and towels. Then, thread from the rough flax goes for woven coarse fabric (for mittens, socks, bags, rugs).
In the spring, canvases are bleached with ash and then on the snow. Then, the canvas is beaten with ash and bleached in the summer on the lovely meadow, somewhere near a lake or river.
In early June, teenagers usually drove carts with manure. While adults were loading the cart, the girls ran to the stream. They folded the 15 meters of canvas into the accordion, dipped it in water, and then evenly spread out on the green grass. Some, not being able to restrain themselves, and seeing that no one will notice, has embarked on a run this delicate, smooth linen carpet ... Linens were drying quickly, girls must now and then dip it into the river, and now the cart with manure is ready. The contrast between the purity of the canvas spread on the green grass and the heavy stench of brownish-yellow dung layers, the difference between the river cool and hot, droning of flies field transformed the bleaching of canvases from the duty to something pleasant and eagerly awaited. Transfer of manure, too, became more enjoyable. That is why adults always allow adolescents and children to bleach the canvases. Ash for bleaching must be cleanly sieved, preferably from an alder tree. Smart that is entrepreneurial, old people in spring purposely walked into the woods to burn alder ash for bleaching linens. A bleached canvas is barely visible if spread out on the snow.
Tuesday, 9 January 2018
PROCESSING OF YARN
The entire female half of the Russian people, young and old alike, knew how to spin a yarn.
But learning how to weave was not an easy task; some woman tries but still cannot comprehend at first glance a pretty simple craft. Any skill seems easy when you master it. Experienced women are genuinely surprised, looking at those who cannot make the canvas wall: "How so? It is that simple: do this first, then what comes out the wall…."
Alas, it turned the majority could grasp it, but not all! Yarn from the spindles was wound to the reel while counting and bandaging the raps. For counting of threads, was used number 3, the number of fingers involved in the count. This number is called the chismenka. One rap of yarn is equal to sixty strands (twenty chimeneas). Nine raps were wound in a yarn ball for the basis of one side of the canvas. For the duck, it is also required the same number. The quantity and quality of yarn balls prepared by early springtime indicated a woman's and family's reputation.
The limit of the finesse of the thread, which was accomplished rarely, was considered when through the silver ring, one must push through the ball of 540 threads folded in two strands, i.e. 1080.
The yarn is wound from the spindle, not only for counting but also for further processing. The balls of yarn must be washed and sometimes soaked in the oat straw and chaff, brewed in hot water. As they said, that takes out of the yarn "hardness." Wet balls were frozen out during vigorous March's morning, the yarn was hung on the fence, from which blackness, stiffness and dampness, typical of just processed flax yarn, disappear. During the processing of dark-gray yarn becomes lighter. The finished canvases are almost snow white.
But learning how to weave was not an easy task; some woman tries but still cannot comprehend at first glance a pretty simple craft. Any skill seems easy when you master it. Experienced women are genuinely surprised, looking at those who cannot make the canvas wall: "How so? It is that simple: do this first, then what comes out the wall…."
Alas, it turned the majority could grasp it, but not all! Yarn from the spindles was wound to the reel while counting and bandaging the raps. For counting of threads, was used number 3, the number of fingers involved in the count. This number is called the chismenka. One rap of yarn is equal to sixty strands (twenty chimeneas). Nine raps were wound in a yarn ball for the basis of one side of the canvas. For the duck, it is also required the same number. The quantity and quality of yarn balls prepared by early springtime indicated a woman's and family's reputation.
The limit of the finesse of the thread, which was accomplished rarely, was considered when through the silver ring, one must push through the ball of 540 threads folded in two strands, i.e. 1080.
The yarn is wound from the spindle, not only for counting but also for further processing. The balls of yarn must be washed and sometimes soaked in the oat straw and chaff, brewed in hot water. As they said, that takes out of the yarn "hardness." Wet balls were frozen out during vigorous March's morning, the yarn was hung on the fence, from which blackness, stiffness and dampness, typical of just processed flax yarn, disappear. During the processing of dark-gray yarn becomes lighter. The finished canvases are almost snow white.
Monday, 8 January 2018
THRESHING OF FLAX
The thresher as a tool for a woman can be compared with the axe for a man. Yet, it is not the central women's instrument. If a carpenter with an axe one can do a lot, then in flax processing, each case requires a unique "tool." The family had several threshers; some were personal, belonging to one woman, favourites made to order, passed by inheritance, etc. In other words, every good beater, as, indeed, the axe, has its own features (art, design, psychological).
With a favourite instrument and handful of flax in hand, the girl goes to someone else's empty barn, the bath, or the non-residential but warm hut. This bash combined employment of economic and aesthetic needs of youth.
Young married women gathered separately. During work, girls sang in unison, improvising, ridiculed "competitors" from other villages, laughed, fooling around. But labour at the gathering was dominated, although it didn't exclude entertainment.
It was mandatory to scutch one "Kirby" of threshed flax during the workday. So, holding flax on the extended left hand, the girl beat it with a fine picker edge, knocking out the flax boon.
Sometimes walls and windows were covered with gray linen dust. Girls tightly tied their faces with scarves. The work was hard and dusty. But they are young and took their own great inconvenience and hardships with a kind smile, in public, teasing each other. They laughed at times and just as they say, with no apparent reason. Such gratuitous laughter, often at a young age, forever disappears with the arrival of a significant stage of life.
With married women: here, the person does not just burst out laughing, for no apparent reason, and wait for a suitable, informative and hilarious word or deed.
With a favourite instrument and handful of flax in hand, the girl goes to someone else's empty barn, the bath, or the non-residential but warm hut. This bash combined employment of economic and aesthetic needs of youth.
Young married women gathered separately. During work, girls sang in unison, improvising, ridiculed "competitors" from other villages, laughed, fooling around. But labour at the gathering was dominated, although it didn't exclude entertainment.
It was mandatory to scutch one "Kirby" of threshed flax during the workday. So, holding flax on the extended left hand, the girl beat it with a fine picker edge, knocking out the flax boon.
Sometimes walls and windows were covered with gray linen dust. Girls tightly tied their faces with scarves. The work was hard and dusty. But they are young and took their own great inconvenience and hardships with a kind smile, in public, teasing each other. They laughed at times and just as they say, with no apparent reason. Such gratuitous laughter, often at a young age, forever disappears with the arrival of a significant stage of life.
With married women: here, the person does not just burst out laughing, for no apparent reason, and wait for a suitable, informative and hilarious word or deed.
CRUSHING OF FLAX
Dry, easily broken plants are asking to go into a crushing machine. Break two or three times a handful, and it falls down with rigid bang chaff exposing the gray, gentle, but firm fibers. By the way, softness and strength are combined in the strands of flax fibre.
There is no less work in autumn in the fields and at home than at the height of summer. Women and girls reluctantly forget for a while about the flax. But with the first snow, with the first frost, when men begin to decimate the cattle and go into the woods, when all that has grown in beds, in the field and in the woods has been cleaned, collected, preserved, at such a time starts an ache in the heart: flax folded in the threshing floor, or somewhere in the changing room, haunts the woman's heart. Merry panic can arise at any moment.
Mary looks out of the window, and it appears to her that a neighbour Masha about to go to crush flax. Although Masha has not thought about the flax and only dragged a bucket of feed into the pen… But Mary, not to be left out, grabs dry flax from the shelf and runs to the crushing machine somewhere in the barn or the bathhouse.
After seeing such a thing, Masha drops everything and runs to start crumple flax. There will be overnight, and the entire village begins to crumple flax. Now and the laziest, most awkward cannot resist: I am worse than the others?
Every competition is always quite personal, that is clear. (A contest between the collectives that include many thousands, located God knows where, as enshrined in the printed commitments, willy-nilly becomes somewhat abstract.)
Under the threshing machine quickly grow heaps of the flax bark, which, while not rotted in the rain, is used as the litter for cattle. The left hand uses the wooden jaw of threshing; the right-hand shoves down a handful of flax, representing one-eighth of a sheaf of flax. A handful is precisely what can grab the palm of a woman. A handful of flax when pulling it out of the ground is smaller and depends on the stiffness of the soil, planting density, and the size of a hand.
Since the threshing process, flax no longer counts in shafts but the handfuls. Fifty handfuls are called "nickel." Threshed and combed flax was measured in "nickels"…
Two "nickels» or a hundred handfuls constitute one "Kirby." During the day, a strong woman would do an average of three "Kirby's." The flax fibers are piled to dry on the stove, sometimes on the benches. All previous course of treatment of flax was individual, sometimes done by the family: either mother-in-law with daughter-in-law, mother and daughter, or daughter-in-law with sister-in-law. This, incidentally, was an excellent opportunity for women's reconciliation. Women and girls joined from different houses during the threshing, or the villages ended. They sometimes gather from the whole town to do retting if the town was relatively small.
There is no less work in autumn in the fields and at home than at the height of summer. Women and girls reluctantly forget for a while about the flax. But with the first snow, with the first frost, when men begin to decimate the cattle and go into the woods, when all that has grown in beds, in the field and in the woods has been cleaned, collected, preserved, at such a time starts an ache in the heart: flax folded in the threshing floor, or somewhere in the changing room, haunts the woman's heart. Merry panic can arise at any moment.
Mary looks out of the window, and it appears to her that a neighbour Masha about to go to crush flax. Although Masha has not thought about the flax and only dragged a bucket of feed into the pen… But Mary, not to be left out, grabs dry flax from the shelf and runs to the crushing machine somewhere in the barn or the bathhouse.
After seeing such a thing, Masha drops everything and runs to start crumple flax. There will be overnight, and the entire village begins to crumple flax. Now and the laziest, most awkward cannot resist: I am worse than the others?
Every competition is always quite personal, that is clear. (A contest between the collectives that include many thousands, located God knows where, as enshrined in the printed commitments, willy-nilly becomes somewhat abstract.)
Under the threshing machine quickly grow heaps of the flax bark, which, while not rotted in the rain, is used as the litter for cattle. The left hand uses the wooden jaw of threshing; the right-hand shoves down a handful of flax, representing one-eighth of a sheaf of flax. A handful is precisely what can grab the palm of a woman. A handful of flax when pulling it out of the ground is smaller and depends on the stiffness of the soil, planting density, and the size of a hand.
Since the threshing process, flax no longer counts in shafts but the handfuls. Fifty handfuls are called "nickel." Threshed and combed flax was measured in "nickels"…
Two "nickels» or a hundred handfuls constitute one "Kirby." During the day, a strong woman would do an average of three "Kirby's." The flax fibers are piled to dry on the stove, sometimes on the benches. All previous course of treatment of flax was individual, sometimes done by the family: either mother-in-law with daughter-in-law, mother and daughter, or daughter-in-law with sister-in-law. This, incidentally, was an excellent opportunity for women's reconciliation. Women and girls joined from different houses during the threshing, or the villages ended. They sometimes gather from the whole town to do retting if the town was relatively small.
FLAX OIL PRESSING
Processed flax heads were moistened with boiled water and were fed with a mixture of potatoes to cattle and chickens.
The flax seeds have also been a vital food aid in peasant families. We must not forget that the Russian people in the majority had been more or less rigorously fasting, which, undoubtedly, had not only religious but purely traditional, including medicinal, value.
An adjusted change of food proven by centuries, periodic "cleansings," and psychological rhythms made a person more calm and stable toward life's odds. Meals of meatless days and periods were accompanied with flax or hemp oil.
Oil pressing was a kind of ritual, something festive, entertaining. Before this, it is necessary to dry flax seeds, mill flax at the mill or manually pound in a mortar. Then seeds were sifted with sieves, and the remnants were pounded again. The pounded mass was placed in pots and warmed up in a clean-swept hot oven. It was wrapped hot in thick linen cloth and put in a wooden block between two dies. These dies were pressed with wedges. You had to beat wedges with a sledgehammer.
Under the block was put a container. Each blow approached an amusing moment when the first drop of the thick amber oil hits a skillet. This moment is watched with interest by both children and adults. After knocking, or rather, pressing oil, the flattened bag is removed and inserted into the block a new, hot new bag.
On the oilcake, compressed into a solid flat plate, was a sharply imprinted graphic structure of linen fabric. The oilcakes are also used to feed cattle.
Flax and hemp oil were produced in Russia, apparently in huge quantities, as it was consumed not only in food but also to produce varnish. And an enormous amount of varnish can be estimated by counting the number of Russian Orthodox churches. This is not counting the small chapels, which also had icons. In the smallest iconostasis, there were a few icons. Let us add here millions of peasant huts, commons, merchants and other houses because, in every family, there are the least one or two icons. The artistic and religious needs of the people affected the economy: the linseed oil was supplied to thousands of big and small artists.
The flax seeds have also been a vital food aid in peasant families. We must not forget that the Russian people in the majority had been more or less rigorously fasting, which, undoubtedly, had not only religious but purely traditional, including medicinal, value.
An adjusted change of food proven by centuries, periodic "cleansings," and psychological rhythms made a person more calm and stable toward life's odds. Meals of meatless days and periods were accompanied with flax or hemp oil.
Oil pressing was a kind of ritual, something festive, entertaining. Before this, it is necessary to dry flax seeds, mill flax at the mill or manually pound in a mortar. Then seeds were sifted with sieves, and the remnants were pounded again. The pounded mass was placed in pots and warmed up in a clean-swept hot oven. It was wrapped hot in thick linen cloth and put in a wooden block between two dies. These dies were pressed with wedges. You had to beat wedges with a sledgehammer.
Under the block was put a container. Each blow approached an amusing moment when the first drop of the thick amber oil hits a skillet. This moment is watched with interest by both children and adults. After knocking, or rather, pressing oil, the flattened bag is removed and inserted into the block a new, hot new bag.
On the oilcake, compressed into a solid flat plate, was a sharply imprinted graphic structure of linen fabric. The oilcakes are also used to feed cattle.
Flax and hemp oil were produced in Russia, apparently in huge quantities, as it was consumed not only in food but also to produce varnish. And an enormous amount of varnish can be estimated by counting the number of Russian Orthodox churches. This is not counting the small chapels, which also had icons. In the smallest iconostasis, there were a few icons. Let us add here millions of peasant huts, commons, merchants and other houses because, in every family, there are the least one or two icons. The artistic and religious needs of the people affected the economy: the linseed oil was supplied to thousands of big and small artists.
SPREADING FLAX FIBERS
By Elias's day, nights become so long that "the horse ate his fill, and a Cossack gets enough sleep." On such nights falls on the meadows vast, clean and not yet icy dew. It just needed flax to turn into a "tresta," in agro-speak into the flax-hay.
Lying on a reaped meadow, grey flax takes a steel gray colour. From the daily change of warmth and freshness and dryness and humidity, fibre separates from the stable, not valuable stem, which changes from flexible to fragile. Threshed bundles haphazardly are thrown on the cart, fastened with the rope and carried on a flat, green grass (the livestock do not graze in this field).
Boys or young girls are happy to make this work; it is so good to ride in a dry, calm autumn field to the green grass passing haystacks, on which are sitting, looking for mice, motionless gray hawks. You do not particularly follow the order; throw the sheaves into the meadow in heaps, as you like. You can horse around and play on such a pasture; no one would say anything.
Mothers or sisters have carved out a free hour, come to the meadow, and spread a thin layer of flax rows. It will come out in long tracks, like doormats. The places covered with such runners were bordered with the same flax runners, round at the corners. It looked like a sizeable patterned tablecloth; sometimes, it was called the mirror.
There was a saying: "Lie down, flax, and then get up and look in the mirror; if not soft yet, lie down and lie down more, only to come out white and soft." Children always somehow wanted to run on it barefoot. But this was forbidden. Finished flax was tested for the fragility of the stems and ease of separation of the boon by taking a sample from one of a handful.
Then it was chosen a warm, windless day, and the flax fibers were raised and put in the sheaves. A green meadow was covered with disorderly groups of these cones, similar from the distance to the playing kids. Flax would dry in such a position; after that, it was bundled with straw bands into large bales and transported to the barn to completely dry.
Some impatient women would bring flax inside and dry it on the stove or bunk; they wanted to begin the subsequent processing. Work on flax from beginning to end is not allocated for special days or weeks: time to do everything between the chores or on holidays. Ripened and dried flax - this is only the beginning. But let's go back to the roots to the heads, that is, the threshed heads of flax.
Lying on a reaped meadow, grey flax takes a steel gray colour. From the daily change of warmth and freshness and dryness and humidity, fibre separates from the stable, not valuable stem, which changes from flexible to fragile. Threshed bundles haphazardly are thrown on the cart, fastened with the rope and carried on a flat, green grass (the livestock do not graze in this field).
Boys or young girls are happy to make this work; it is so good to ride in a dry, calm autumn field to the green grass passing haystacks, on which are sitting, looking for mice, motionless gray hawks. You do not particularly follow the order; throw the sheaves into the meadow in heaps, as you like. You can horse around and play on such a pasture; no one would say anything.
Mothers or sisters have carved out a free hour, come to the meadow, and spread a thin layer of flax rows. It will come out in long tracks, like doormats. The places covered with such runners were bordered with the same flax runners, round at the corners. It looked like a sizeable patterned tablecloth; sometimes, it was called the mirror.
There was a saying: "Lie down, flax, and then get up and look in the mirror; if not soft yet, lie down and lie down more, only to come out white and soft." Children always somehow wanted to run on it barefoot. But this was forbidden. Finished flax was tested for the fragility of the stems and ease of separation of the boon by taking a sample from one of a handful.
Then it was chosen a warm, windless day, and the flax fibers were raised and put in the sheaves. A green meadow was covered with disorderly groups of these cones, similar from the distance to the playing kids. Flax would dry in such a position; after that, it was bundled with straw bands into large bales and transported to the barn to completely dry.
Some impatient women would bring flax inside and dry it on the stove or bunk; they wanted to begin the subsequent processing. Work on flax from beginning to end is not allocated for special days or weeks: time to do everything between the chores or on holidays. Ripened and dried flax - this is only the beginning. But let's go back to the roots to the heads, that is, the threshed heads of flax.
THRESHING
For delivery of threshing sheaves (and not only flax), were built two-wheeled wagons with high suspension and wide-extended sides in the front. Usually, two people are required to move the sheaves. They would take them by the scruff out of the piles by three or four in each hand and throw them into the carriage. One was piling sheaves while another threw them in.
To place flax bundles, like rye bundles, it had to be done skillfully, although they are not spreading out, like oats bundles.
While stuffing the box to the brim, workers piled up sheaves in rows along the sides, the heads inside. Then sheaves were brought to the threshing floor, left in the barn, and in the evening, grandfather took kindling and started an oven in the barn. Overnight the sheaves were dried.
In the morning, they were dropped down to the wooden floor of the barn, and then people sat and beat the sheaves with special mallets. Young people and adolescents were especially fond of threshing or beating of flax. So many competed who will do more, to thresh in the morning 40-50 units was considered quite normal. After that, threshed bundles were neatly folded on the pass in the threshing floor and even directly on the carriage to take them back on the field for lying down.
Flax seeds and an unsifted mass of seed pods are raked into a pile, carefully brushed with a broom and aired. For the draft in the threshing floor were built small side gates were. Sometimes, when there was no wind, it was summoned with soft whistling; some people believed in such a method.
Thousands of pagan, poetic details and large and small rituals accompanied each stage of labour. Sifted flax seeds were heavy, dark brown; it was said that they "flow." And indeed, they flowed. Like water, it finds even the smallest hole in the shelf or in the bag (again, the hostess should be able to weave sturdy canvas, and the owner must be a good carpenter).
In the postwar period, flax threshing and breaking were done by machines and combing. To expedite matters, it is not even always thrashed and left on the strip. At one time, flax was threshed in a very original, albeit controversial, way: spread out on the paved road and rolled flax heads with the truck or tractor wheels.
To place flax bundles, like rye bundles, it had to be done skillfully, although they are not spreading out, like oats bundles.
While stuffing the box to the brim, workers piled up sheaves in rows along the sides, the heads inside. Then sheaves were brought to the threshing floor, left in the barn, and in the evening, grandfather took kindling and started an oven in the barn. Overnight the sheaves were dried.
In the morning, they were dropped down to the wooden floor of the barn, and then people sat and beat the sheaves with special mallets. Young people and adolescents were especially fond of threshing or beating of flax. So many competed who will do more, to thresh in the morning 40-50 units was considered quite normal. After that, threshed bundles were neatly folded on the pass in the threshing floor and even directly on the carriage to take them back on the field for lying down.
Flax seeds and an unsifted mass of seed pods are raked into a pile, carefully brushed with a broom and aired. For the draft in the threshing floor were built small side gates were. Sometimes, when there was no wind, it was summoned with soft whistling; some people believed in such a method.
Thousands of pagan, poetic details and large and small rituals accompanied each stage of labour. Sifted flax seeds were heavy, dark brown; it was said that they "flow." And indeed, they flowed. Like water, it finds even the smallest hole in the shelf or in the bag (again, the hostess should be able to weave sturdy canvas, and the owner must be a good carpenter).
In the postwar period, flax threshing and breaking were done by machines and combing. To expedite matters, it is not even always thrashed and left on the strip. At one time, flax was threshed in a very original, albeit controversial, way: spread out on the paved road and rolled flax heads with the truck or tractor wheels.
PULLING OF FLAX
Flax harvesting was to be done by the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the end of August). Of course, nothing terrible will happen if you pull the flax a little later, but then there is a danger of late flax spreading, which in turn causes further delays.
Shame on a girl if there is nothing to spin at the winter gatherings! It could happen that nobody will marry her, and if he marries, then, without the gifts and a dowry, it will be not a real wedding too, and married life will not go well because nothing escapes from a right but the strict and vigilant public eye. And not every sweet early morning sleep lasts in the cool girl's attics and dens. Sometimes, and dear mama is not dear when she awakens you at dawn. Mother pities her child, but what we can do? But then, her daughter will never suffer disgrace or shame. It is difficult to wake up amid a young, strong, sweet girl's dream! But what does this brief pain compare to the morning's joy, still without a fog of fatigue labour?
To mow at sunrise is, for a healthy person, a joy. The joy of early morning work experiences a lumberjack or a farmer. This joy disappears with the first wave of fatigue, making way for another, unlike the first, in the morning. But if you are not being reproached, nobody throws at you baleful looks, and you want to do something again and again. The new wave of strength comes only during intelligent and accessible work, and it comes out of nowhere.
It could too happen like this: in the morning, take care of cattle before lunch, mow hay; after dinner, makes a haystack and reap the wheat. And not much time for flax that's left. But you have to finish with flax despite everything. It is sweet if the soil is soft and does not hold flax roots with all its strength. Good, if the flax is clean and, grabbing it a handful, you do not have to pick up flax strands in the prickly thistles. Only pull it and stack! But if the soil is firm like a stone, and the flax is full of weeds?
The flax row is broad, and you never see the end of it, and next to it, there is another just like this. You do not know how much you will get out of this flax harvest; here is too little joy.
Infinity and futility in physical labour are equivalent to facelessness; they ultimately kill the excitement and quench a thirst in a man to finish the work by a particular time. What is there to finish if you don't see the end in sight? Set yourself a task in the number of completed sheaves, and then tearing flax is much more pleasant. But the number of sheaves is also infinite, almost abstract at infinity, the uncertainty of these wide strips. You pull this row; right away, you should go and pull flax on another.
Sometimes, just started rows remained until the whiteflies (snowflakes) season...
Children, in their naiveté, facilitate this drudgery in simple ways. They were throwing pebbles or even their own caps far forward, giving themselves a promise: I will pull flax up to this place and go home. What a pleasure to discover your cap in a clean place, and after tying the last sheaf, escape to swim! Another approach: you pull flax in a narrow passage along the furrow, then across the strip to the other track, and pull flax to make a narrow corridor back. You get an island of flax isolated from all sides, which can also be divided into two islands, diminishing rapidly.
The palm is covered with the dark green of the flax juice and splinters, fingers refuse to serve, and you have a headache from some kind of dope. But, overcoming it all - dizziness and the heat, fatigue and laziness, you become a different person: it is noticeable even to yourself. Moreover, having learned to pull flax, it is more likely to learn other fieldwork, as they are all easier and, perhaps even easier for the child or adolescent.
In pulling of flax, there are enjoyable moments: hand feels earthy cracking, sound of removed roots out of the soft ground. The first handful of flax was used for binding. Around the head, a handful of flax is made a knot, and the rest of handful the is split in half. Finally, you get a long rope to put a flax sheaf using the left hand.
When a large handful of flax folded on the rope crosswise, eight handfuls of the stalks, which helped hold better flax, moisture dried off immediately after the rain, and the seed matured steady and dependable. Wide and spreading on both sides, sheaves were placed in rows on the strip.
Careless or hasty owners began to bundle the pulled flax in regular sheaves. Thick and heavy, like oats sheaves, they were called "tyupki." This flax will never dry out: brown from the outside, inside the sheaf, green and dump. Tyupki joined their tops to each other and formed the so-called piles in dry weather; they stood on the runway before seed maturation.
Children played hide and seek around them and sometimes knocked them down, causing a good-natured resentment toward adults. Even more interesting was to run under suspensions made of poles on which sometimes hung whole flax harvest. On those suspensions, flax matured and got dry much faster.
Shame on a girl if there is nothing to spin at the winter gatherings! It could happen that nobody will marry her, and if he marries, then, without the gifts and a dowry, it will be not a real wedding too, and married life will not go well because nothing escapes from a right but the strict and vigilant public eye. And not every sweet early morning sleep lasts in the cool girl's attics and dens. Sometimes, and dear mama is not dear when she awakens you at dawn. Mother pities her child, but what we can do? But then, her daughter will never suffer disgrace or shame. It is difficult to wake up amid a young, strong, sweet girl's dream! But what does this brief pain compare to the morning's joy, still without a fog of fatigue labour?
To mow at sunrise is, for a healthy person, a joy. The joy of early morning work experiences a lumberjack or a farmer. This joy disappears with the first wave of fatigue, making way for another, unlike the first, in the morning. But if you are not being reproached, nobody throws at you baleful looks, and you want to do something again and again. The new wave of strength comes only during intelligent and accessible work, and it comes out of nowhere.
It could too happen like this: in the morning, take care of cattle before lunch, mow hay; after dinner, makes a haystack and reap the wheat. And not much time for flax that's left. But you have to finish with flax despite everything. It is sweet if the soil is soft and does not hold flax roots with all its strength. Good, if the flax is clean and, grabbing it a handful, you do not have to pick up flax strands in the prickly thistles. Only pull it and stack! But if the soil is firm like a stone, and the flax is full of weeds?
The flax row is broad, and you never see the end of it, and next to it, there is another just like this. You do not know how much you will get out of this flax harvest; here is too little joy.
Infinity and futility in physical labour are equivalent to facelessness; they ultimately kill the excitement and quench a thirst in a man to finish the work by a particular time. What is there to finish if you don't see the end in sight? Set yourself a task in the number of completed sheaves, and then tearing flax is much more pleasant. But the number of sheaves is also infinite, almost abstract at infinity, the uncertainty of these wide strips. You pull this row; right away, you should go and pull flax on another.
Sometimes, just started rows remained until the whiteflies (snowflakes) season...
Children, in their naiveté, facilitate this drudgery in simple ways. They were throwing pebbles or even their own caps far forward, giving themselves a promise: I will pull flax up to this place and go home. What a pleasure to discover your cap in a clean place, and after tying the last sheaf, escape to swim! Another approach: you pull flax in a narrow passage along the furrow, then across the strip to the other track, and pull flax to make a narrow corridor back. You get an island of flax isolated from all sides, which can also be divided into two islands, diminishing rapidly.
The palm is covered with the dark green of the flax juice and splinters, fingers refuse to serve, and you have a headache from some kind of dope. But, overcoming it all - dizziness and the heat, fatigue and laziness, you become a different person: it is noticeable even to yourself. Moreover, having learned to pull flax, it is more likely to learn other fieldwork, as they are all easier and, perhaps even easier for the child or adolescent.
In pulling of flax, there are enjoyable moments: hand feels earthy cracking, sound of removed roots out of the soft ground. The first handful of flax was used for binding. Around the head, a handful of flax is made a knot, and the rest of handful the is split in half. Finally, you get a long rope to put a flax sheaf using the left hand.
When a large handful of flax folded on the rope crosswise, eight handfuls of the stalks, which helped hold better flax, moisture dried off immediately after the rain, and the seed matured steady and dependable. Wide and spreading on both sides, sheaves were placed in rows on the strip.
Careless or hasty owners began to bundle the pulled flax in regular sheaves. Thick and heavy, like oats sheaves, they were called "tyupki." This flax will never dry out: brown from the outside, inside the sheaf, green and dump. Tyupki joined their tops to each other and formed the so-called piles in dry weather; they stood on the runway before seed maturation.
Children played hide and seek around them and sometimes knocked them down, causing a good-natured resentment toward adults. Even more interesting was to run under suspensions made of poles on which sometimes hung whole flax harvest. On those suspensions, flax matured and got dry much faster.
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