Beginning in the 2023 growing season, the Northwest Crops and Soils team (NWCST) embarked on a three year USDA CARE grant entitled Hemp Fiber: Building Farmer Capacity to Meet the Opportunities and Challenges of a new Market. The grant features 5 research trials on the Borderview Research Farm in Alburgh and one trial at our partner farm owned by bast fiber researcher, artist, and educator Andrea Myklebust of Danby, VT. Last week, NWCST research specialist Laura Sullivan visited Andrea to check in on the trials and collect emergence data in the satellite plots. In partnership with this grant, Andrea will be observing the effects of Harvest Timing on two varieties, while also conducting her own grant-funded research on hemp and flax characteristics.
The plants were roughly two weeks old and 8in tall, with healthy thick stands. Laura and Andrea recorded emergence populations by counting the number of plants in a one foot section of a row, as many as ten times in each plot. All were thriving at the time of data collection, but have since suffered some lodging due to the heavy and persistent rains.
Pictured on left is Andrea’s 2024 fiber research plots. Hemp is situated on the left with flax shown on the right. Pictured on the right are two-week old Tiborszallasi fiber hemp plants growing densely in Danby, VT, June 2024.
They also spent some time processing fiber and ruminating on the impacts of various methods of retting on fiber. The fiber shown below was left out exposed to the elements for the duration of winter, giving a softness not yet seen by the pair in their years of research-grown samples.
Fiber that had been grown in the 2023 season and stored unretted caught the attention of Laura for its golden colored stalks. Many say that fiber, when allowed to sit for months between harvest and processing, will yield a nicer, finer fiber than stalks processed right away. This is something that we will continue to study as the seasons turn and we are able to accumulate material for post-harvest processing experimentation.
On the left Laura holds notably soft fiber that was retted in a combination of ways involving both winter retting and water retting. On the right is Andrea standing with her unretted and dried fiber grown in the 2023 season.
Also grabbing attention was this netted bag (picture shown above), constructed by Andrea’s daughter Tansy. Tansy utilized hemp from Andrea’s 2023 crop for the netting. Andrea has devoted many years to her craft as a textile expert and educator as well as a bast fiber researcher. Laura was impressed with her ingenuity for creating her own tools from found objects to accomplish her objectives. The photos below shows a makeshift distaff (tool used for spinning long bast fibers) made from a pitchfork mounted in an umbrella stand. When in use, a spinner pulls fiber from the distaff and feeds it into the spinning wheel (picture on left), and a spinning wheel crafted from a bike tire (picture on right).
Andrea shared that she was inspired to make this spinning wheel when she grew tired of hearing folks who would come to watch her spin at events say things like, “this is how they used to make yarn”. Using a modern material in the spinning wheel has the ability to shatter the perception that no one is doing things like this anymore, or that they don’t have any modern value. Laura and Andrea have been working together to create an archive of handspun samples from each of the various treatments represented in the USDA CARE grant trials. So far they have a complete set from the 2023 Seeding Rate and Harvest Date Trials, making for a one-of-a-kind record of data that will be utilized in determining agronomic best practices for hemo fiber farmers going forward.
If you would like to learn more, don’t miss our upcoming field Day at the Borderview Research Farm in Alburgh on Thursday July 25th 2024. Laura and Andrea are expected to be present and ready to answer all your hemp fiber-related questions. Online registration is at https://go.uvm.edu/2024annualfieldday.
Pictured on the right are yarn samples of each treatment in the 2023 Hemp Fiber Seeding Rate Trial at the Borderview Research Farm in Alburgh, VT. On the left are Laura Sullivan and Andrea Myklebust checking in on the two week old hemp plots at Mountain Heart Farm in Danby Vt. June 2024.