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.