The San Saba news. [volume] (San Saba, Tex.) 1873-1966, 1889-03-29
FLAX CULTURE.
RAISING AN IMPORTANT PLANT
IN IRELAND.
Flowing and Seeding-Great Labor
and Care Re CURED in Wedding
Tho Steep Pond and
the Scutch Mill.

The lard used for fax growing in Ire
land is plowed in the fall, light or
loamy soils being preferred, and is
worked in the spring to mold with
harrows. usually crosswise and dag
onally; but the soil Is only pulverized
on top, as, curiously, the flax, which
grows as far from the surface into the
ground rs it does out of it, with a
moderate soil resistance to a downward
growth, seems 10 possess tendency of
increase in length Of stock. The seed
is sown in April broadcast, from pouch
made by tying together two corners Of
linen sheet. This is slung over the
right shoulder, the left arm holding the
seed pouch open-precisely as our own
good fathers used to SOW wheat, oats
and barley from the striped, brown, two
bushel bag. The entire skill required
in fiax-sowing is in securing a uniform
distribution of the seed and a stuff GENTLY
liberal amount; for those two essentials
give even length of stalk and least
branching at the top, largely increasing
the value to both the spinner and the
farmer.
To this point the tenant has required
no more help than perhaps his own fam
lily could give him; but now that
'weeding-timen has arrived, additional
labor must be hired, 1t comes trooping
down from the mountain districts in the
form of buxom, shapely Irish lasses.
Amazons in frame and strength, they
are beings of a brave and sunny mood
who can exist on less food, work harder
in the field for twelve hours Of every day,
and dance longer and with more vigor
Gus evolutions at night, than any other
women or men that live. Nor are these
picturesque folk all. Women and
girls from near villages also hire to the
Irish farmer in summer. The mountain
GERS engage from two to three months;
the village girls, by the day or week.
Both do mems labor, or more, and re-
ceive about one shilling per day. Their
food is of tho meageiest and plainest
character. Oaten bread, made from
coarse oatmeal, with only salt and water
added, occasionally a portion of the
commonest vegetables, with a little of
the vilest purchasable tea, and, for
great luxury, drop of milk, are all.
They scarcely know the taste of butter,
meat or fowl. And yet these girls have
eyes liquid with light, teeth white and
cleaning as new frost, compilations that
rival tints of the rose, and forms of
lovely symmetry.
The wedding of fax in Ireland neces-
states great labor and care. The foreign
seed used seems to engender multipli-
city of weeds. A 20-acre field would
require about 200 days OF one hand for
thorough work, or ten days per single
acre. When the fax is about six inches
high, wedding is begun, damp days be-
ing chosen, so that the weeds may be
more easily extracted, and the tender
shoots of fax bruised as little as posi-
BILE. In Belgium the weeders, with
coarse cloths around their knees, creep
along on all-fours, and among the thou
sands that may be seen in a days journey,
not one is out of this groveling position.
But the Irish weeders do their work
barefooted and crouched in a half-sitting
posture. A singular fact about this
work is that it is all done toward the
wind This is in order that the breezes
may assist in lifting the bent OF bruised
shoots again, and a curious belief pre-
walls that this unavoidable treading and
I - tlcessax inits early period of
JHa,e dating effect upon the
i