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.