Flax

For the past 4 years we've been growing flax with the aim of making linen. It's dead easy to grow - stick it in and leave it alone. We were a bit naive - we didn't realise there were 13 stages in the processing but we are gradually working to get the supply chain gaps filled in. We've been sharing the progress on @mallonlinen on instagram and I'm getting at least one request a week from designers asking if we have linen available - if only! Spinning is the really big challenge, the vast majority of linen produced in Europe goes to China for spinning but there is a local textile company working on setting it up here which would be amazing. We are also looking at what we could produce from unspun fibre - doing some work with University of Leeds to try making felt. I think there could be good scope for growing for seed too - we had a request last week from a Spanish stable manager looking for a tonne a month - that could be combined which would be a hell of a lot easier that the hand harvesting that we do - but probably not so much craic.