Tight sheaves of ripened flax cart. “Zaonezhsky flax: how it was. Does stretching prevent injury?

Investors are looking at our flax mills

Last year turned out to be a fruitful year for the flax growing industry in the Mogilev region. Having received an average of about 10 centners of flax fiber per hectare, the enterprises finally earned a profit. Recently, both farmers and processors were awarded diplomas, certificates of honor and cash prizes. However, instead of joy over success, anxious anticipation reigns among the work collectives of flax mills...

Last summer, during an investment forum in Mogilev, businessman Sergei Levin, managing director of Lebortovo Capital Partners, known for his projects Syabar Brewing Company and IP Staraya Krepost, announced his intention to invest in flax mills in the Mogilev region. However, oddly enough, enterprises were wary of the potential influx of capital.

Should we be bought? - Nikolai Pivankov, director of Mstislavlen OJSC, shrugs. - We already work well. At the end of last year, profitability was 46 percent. We received 625 million rubles in net profit. There will be enough raw materials for one and a half years of work. We invest money in equipping the enterprise and purchasing equipment. We are going to increase wages: last year the average for the plant was about 660 thousand rubles. In short, you have everything you need to develop independently. We do not know the investor's specific plans. That’s why people are afraid: what if, for example, there are layoffs?..

Why, when we were unprofitable, did no one pay attention to us? - Deputy Director of JSC Gorkilen Yadviga Bashchenko supports his colleague. “But as soon as we made a profit, people immediately appeared who wanted to buy us. Last year, thanks to a good flax harvest, we filled all our warehouses with raw materials. Profitability - 30 percent. This year we are increasing salaries... What more could you want?

Indeed, it’s nice to look at the Mstislav and Gorets flax mills today. It's not just cleanliness and order in the workshops. There are also many new tractors, combines, and seeders. A week or two - and some of the machines will go out into the field.

And this year we will definitely grow good flax,” said Mikhail Anikeev, Chairman of the Gorki District Executive Committee. - Previously, they didn’t do it on farms because it was unprofitable. Now purchasing prices allow increasing the profitability of this crop to 30 percent. Therefore, I am against the sale of our plant: we ourselves are able to develop flax growing. In addition, there is a living example before your eyes, discouraging you from counting on someone to do everything for you. Investors who came to our dairy plant pledged to invest 20 billion rubles in the development of production. So far, only 1.5 billion has been invested. At the end of last year, the company operated with losses of 6 billion rubles...

And yet no one will argue that additional financial injections are a benefit for any enterprise. Another thing is the price of the issue...

Today, the value of enterprise assets is 56 billion rubles, - Viktor Geidel, General Director of the Obllen holding, introduces the matter. - At the same time, shares that have not been revalued since 1996 are worth only 7.4 billion. It is at par that the investor intends to purchase the enterprise. In my opinion, this is not entirely beneficial for us... And in general, when deciding the issue of investors coming to enterprises, it is worth considering other options. Now, for example, we are working closely with a Dutch company, one of the seven leading flax producers in Europe. We are looking for areas of cooperation.

The holding understands: despite positive economic trends, it is premature to talk about sustainable operation of flax mills. Today it is important not to produce products, but to sell them profitably, including on the foreign market. Last year, Mogilev region enterprises exported only 425 tons of fiber - worth 600 million rubles. Not a lot, given the fact that flax is not an ordinary crop for Belarus. Both climatic conditions and many years of experience in its cultivation make it possible to count on a more noticeable presence on the world market for flax products. There is one condition: the price-quality ratio must correspond to its market conditions. We can hardly do this without substantial capital investments. Modernization and technical re-equipment of enterprises is not a cheap matter. And investment from outside would be very helpful here. Another question is, what are the plans of those who want to invest money in our enterprises? I called Sergei Levin and asked him several “uncomfortable” questions.

- Isn’t your intention to acquire enterprises at the nominal value of shares hiding behind the usual desire to make money: first buy low, and then sell at a higher price?

Price for us is a purely technical issue. When the project was preliminary considered by the Mogilev Regional Executive Committee about a year ago, we discussed a principled approach to the cost of enterprises. Considering that at that time we were talking about consistently unprofitable factories (in 2008 they made a profit for the first time in many years), we came to the conclusion that it would be logical to use the experience of transferring ineffective collective farms to new owners. Thus, for the first time, there was talk of selling flax mills at nominal value. If we purchase them at this price, we will be able to recoup the investment only after 8 years. A business plan taking into account the value of assets was not even considered: in this case, the payback of the project is extended over a period of time that is unacceptable for any investor. To dot the i’s, at the request of the regional executive committee, we are hiring an international appraiser who will present the results in the coming months.

You are looking to acquire businesses that are operating at a profit. Why don’t you pay attention to unprofitable factories? I'm sure they would have been sold to you faster.

If we carefully analyze the financial documentation, we will see: government assistance to enterprises amounts to almost 100 percent of revenue. Last year, factories received almost 15 billion rubles in subsidies and 16 billion rubles in gratuitous assistance. Why shouldn't they be profitable under such conditions? The goal of our project is to refuse free aid, increase revenue, invest substantial funds in modern selection technologies, purchase harvesting equipment and processing lines.

What confuses the business leaders I spoke with most is that, apart from promises of financial investments, there are no concrete proposals...

The volume of investments that I have attracted to the Mogilev region allows me not to comment on these concerns.

What fundamentally new can you offer to the flax industry?

We want to bring two components to the project that are missing in the country's linen industry today: investment and creative entrepreneurship. Mogilev flax should take a place on the world market. I would like to say one more thing: there are many potential projects in our country. Let's not fight for assets, but rather make them profitable and truly effective.

Question: With tight () sheaves of ripened flax, the peasant's cart on horseback is full. The tired dressmaker sews a fashionable dress all night long without rest. Assignment: Before words with unstressed vowels at the root, write a test word in brackets. Find words with the separator ь in the text and write them in the 1st column. Write the word in which ь shows the softness of the consonant in the 2nd column. The word in which ь shows that the word is feminine, in the 3rd.

With tight () sheaves of ripened flax the peasant's cart on horseback is full. The tired dressmaker sews a fashionable dress all night long without rest. Assignment: Before words with unstressed vowels at the root, write a test word in brackets. Find words with the separator ь in the text and write them in the 1st column. Write the word in which ь shows the softness of the consonant in the 2nd column. The word in which ь shows that the word is feminine, in the 3rd.

Answers:

1. Dress, sews. 2. Flax, peasant. 3.Night ----- Sheaves (sheaf), full (full).

Answers:

1st column: sews, dress, peasant 2nd column: linen, darkness, earring 3rd column: night, shadow, oven

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Type of occupation: farming Purpose: fabric, fishing tackle, ropes and ropes for household use, harnesses Time: until autumn Traditionally occupied by: women

Flax, like grain crops, has accompanied Eastern European human societies since ancient times, at least for several millennia. Already in the second millennium BC, the ancestors of modern Slavs knew how to grow flax and make fabric from it. Most likely, by this time they were already familiar with the processing of nettles, hemp, and tree bast, especially linden, into fiber. The very importance of plant fiber in traditional, pre-industrial life is difficult to overestimate - threads were spun from it and strands were twisted. Tochivo (fabric) was woven from threads and fishing gear was knitted; ropes and cables for household use, harness, boating and fishing gear curled from the strands. In a word, fibrous plants have always been of great importance in the everyday life of traditional human societies and, it is believed, will become so again when humanity overcomes its infatuation with new synthetic materials. Many skin irritations, eczema, and allergies go away on their own, as soon as a person puts on linen clothes. Precisely (from the verb “to flow” - the thread “flows” through the fingers, like time, like fate), woven by hand, homespun, also carried a kind, protective energy.

The idea of human destiny as a thread, and the universe as a fabric on which everything real and otherworldly is embroidered, like various patterns, are fundamental to many ancient cultures. I had to read that, according to some modern scientists, the basis of the Universe is really a “fabric” of endless, inextricable and imperceptible magnetic threads, “spun” from particles that carry an elementary magnetic charge - monopoles and woven with each other by magnetic fields. It seems that the ideas of the ancients are correct and our world is really a “pattern” on this indestructible and omnipresent “fabric”.

Also, for a very long time, flax (in Latin Linum Usitatissimum - “the most useful flax”), as a plant species, has several varieties, the main two of which are long-lasting flax and curly flax (curly). Long-lasting flax, deaf flax, rostun - tall and few-branched flax, produces little seed, but excellent long and strong fiber; the curly tree, on the contrary, is low, branchy, abundant in color and, at the time of ripeness, covered with seed pods - a “bell”. The best linen is made from fiber. Curly is grown for oil; especially before, when flaxseed oil had not yet been replaced in the Russian diet by first hemp and then sunflower oil, a lot of curly hair was grown in central and southern Russia. Between these very different varieties there are several varieties of “mezheumkov”, “mezheberry”, which produce both tolerable fiber and quite a lot of seed. In recent centuries, in Zaonezhye, exclusively fiber flax has been grown, the homeland of which is considered to be the north-west of Russia; No other flax, curly flax, was known here, and little vegetable oil was consumed in food in the early days.

In the second half of the nineteenth century. Throughout Europe, the famous hand-made “Karelian flax” was famous, which received medals at international exhibitions and was supplied from the Olonets province. At the same time, almost no flax was produced for sale in Zaonezhye; profitable flax was grown mainly in Pudozh and Olonets districts. Obviously, this is due to the fact that Zaonezhie in the 19th - first third of the 20th centuries was densely populated and there was not enough fertile arable land - there are a lot of lakes, swamps and rocks. It’s not for nothing that the Zaonezh proverb says: “We have water - even if you fill it with water, if you have pebbles - even if you kill yourself.” But small plots of flax (flax), for the needs of their families, were, as a rule, available in every Trans-Onezh peasant farm.

The Zaonezhsky land in general is not very good for flax; it does not grow well in rocky, well-drained soils. Fertile lowlands of fields and low clayey areas - “derbins” – were allocated for flax fields. Also, flax was sown on fertile cuttings in the first year after burning, when the land on them yields the harvest in full force.

The peasant contribution to flax production was limited to careful cultivation of the land and the manufacture and repair of flax processing tools. The cultivation, processing, spinning and weaving of flax were traditionally carried out exclusively by women's hands.

As already mentioned, flax “loves” clay; at the same time, the ground under it must be especially carefully processed, without large clods and stones. Since the flax fields were small, all the clods were broken with kokits (wooden “hammers”), and the stones were picked out between iron rakes. Flax was sown from birch bark baskets, baskets hung on a strap around the neck or over the shoulder. The seeds were scattered by hand, from right to left. The crops were covered with a harrow or the same rake.

Zaonezhye had its own, local, peculiarities of growing and processing flax to obtain “tochiv”, which were not known in other areas of the Olonets province. In addition, in different Zaonezh villages, even, sometimes, in different families, there were also their own - so to speak, village and family differences in the methods and content of work. But, of course, these small features enriched and expanded the general direction of the “linen” Zaonezhsky tradition.

I would like to talk about this lengthy and painstaking work not “in general”, branching out into many well-known features, but through the living narrative of two indigenous Zaonezhsky peasant women who remember how they worked with flax in their villages, in their families. The fact is that “home”, traditional flax processing ceased in Zaonezhye a very long time ago, in the early 1930s, after the forced collectivization of peasants. Probably, a sad saying remains from that time: “Oh, my little spinning spinner, I’ll go and throw you out into the street!” For some time, the main features of traditional technology were preserved in collective farm flax growing, but not for long. Therefore, Zaonezhan women born in 1919 and 1925 talk, of course, about how their parents, elders, did it, and they no longer remember or do not know some of the subtleties of their previous work with flax. However, their story is the testimony of skilled eyewitnesses, since they themselves managed to put their hands to the parental flax. This is how it was in the Transonezh village of Shirokie Polya:

“Our mother was a craftswoman - she could do everything, everything, everything - well done. There is only one towel left from my mother, it is embroidered according to the basting, so thin. The ends are long, they called it a pattern. (Obraznik is a long towel made of the best sharpener, with embroidered ends. It was used to decorate the icon in a large corner on holidays. Obraznik is a mandatory sacred attribute of a Zaonezh wedding ceremony). Well, they taught us how to embroider - both in stitching, and in cross stitch, and in basting, and in satin stitch - after the fifth grade we had to sew. (“By pulling”, “cross”, “by basting”, “satin stitch” - types of traditional Zaonezh embroidery. The narrator’s father was shot in 1937, when she was 12 years old, her mother died during the occupation in 1942, leaving three children). Mom worked as a homeworker, so she’s used to being around her at home.

Flax was planted in the same fields. Where there are oats, they will leave a corner for flax. Flax takes a lot of juice from the ground, so the men did not let them sow much of it. Lines of five by five meters in two or three fields.

They would say, it used to be: “Boys, go weed so that the flax is clean!” The flax is weeded when it grows two inches (an inch - 4.45 cm). There are children - so children, and even adults, fly. They weeded in skirts, without covering anything. We moved slowly like that, if you passed in a dirty skirt, every “speck” from the side had to be pulled out so that the weed would not be there. If there is a weed, there will be no such fiber. You come to the end, shake off this garbage and sit back down, you go to the second post (posta is a strip of field or mowing cultivated by one person). And we just weeded once - there it will already go, and the weed will have nowhere to grow. But it blooms blue, very beautiful.”

This is what one storyteller says, and another, originally from the Zaonezh village of Lisitsyno, adds: “Flax is sown about the Trinity (Trinity is the fiftieth day from Orthodox Easter, the seventh Sunday after Easter). They sowed in a spring field. The lands were plowed well, with horses and plows, and were soft. Loves soft earth, does not like stones. Weed in homespun skirts - you pull them on and you swim. Len will lie down, but then nothing will happen to him, he gets up again.”

And now the flax has closed and bloomed with a blue “magnetic” color. Meanwhile, haymaking and harvest passed and autumn time arrived. The first narrator, from Broad Fields, continues:

“And they pulled it out in the fall - that’s where the work was! You pull out all this flax, fold it into rams, crosswise. They were called rams (a ram is a bag of pulled flax, in which the pasterns of the flax were folded crosswise). The sheaves were not tied together, but just a bell here and a bell there. Then you need a large rug, homespun, my mother had a rug for the whole room, stitched together. How many trusts are there already - four, five trusts are sewn instead of (trust - here: a sharpening strip made on a weaving mill). Such a rug is laid out and a stand is made in the middle so long, and on it stands a board and supports are placed. And on the top of the board such teeth are cut out. Oh, I don't know what it's called. (they called it a thrower, a thrower, a comb, and the work itself was called throwing flax). Well, one on that side, one on the other. And here we are, like two sisters together - one will break through from the other side, pull out the flax, the second at this time - from the other. The bell also needs to be taken care of, which is why they laid out a large rug and collected it for seeds. You’ll throw it all away, then tie it into sheaves.”

Another, from the village of Lisitsyna, tells how they did it:

“They pulled the flax with their hands and placed sheaves of two against each other. As soon as it dries, they bring to the field a large rug, an “obstacle”, sewn from four trusts - and on a throwing board, a board with teeth, they beat the bell and throw it. There were also “lying” throwers (that is, those in which the board with teeth was not located at a right angle to the ground, but tilted). The bell was dried in the attic or in the sun. So that the seeds fall out, press the bell with a small wooden spatula. The seeds then blew in the wind, on the litter.”

The winnowed flaxseed was poured into bags and stored carefully, in a dry place - on a tower (attic) at home or on top of a barn. The chaff left over from the bell was used to feed livestock. And the “combed” flax was subjected to further processing - soaking. Here's how flax was soaked in Shirokiye Polye:

“We have a river there, and there were large vacant lots near the river. Then the sheaves were dipped into the river. In two rows of sheaves, on top of the board, pegs will be driven along so that they do not float away. The weight is placed on top so that it doesn’t drown in water. How long they soaked there - the old people knew everything, they had already tested everything, how many days to soak. (Usually flax was soaked for 10–14 days.) When it becomes yellow and slimy, it will be pulled ashore. It will flow around, wither, and then you need to spread it out over the flax, in rows, onto the grass, all over the wasteland, so that it dries. They didn’t turn it over - it’s thin, so it doesn’t take long to dry, just like one flax.”

And here’s how flax was soaked in the village of Lisitsyna:

“The flax was soaked in large tubs and soaking pits in the swamp. It lay in the soaker for two weeks; if you pull, the fiber remains, then it’s ready. Then they spread it out, spread it out thinly, and turned it on the other side. Then you need to dry it in a washing machine; flax from the street doesn’t wrinkle, it needs to be dried.”

It must be said that flax soaked in pits in stagnant water produces a silky fiber, but less durable than flax soaked in running water. Also, the quality of the fiber depends on the properties of the water itself (hardness, turbidity, presence of silt) and on the properties of the bottom soil. The duration of soaking depends on the water temperature: the warmer the water, the faster the flax “ripens”. It has been established that water below 9°C is not at all suitable for urination. At a water temperature of 20°C, flax ripens in two weeks. That is why wealthy peasants, who were able to take their time with the processing of fresh flax, preferred to dry the flax in the fall and soak it in warm water the following summer.

The flax dried on the street, when it “crackled,” was collected, tied into sheaves and taken to the bathhouse. “And then, as soon as they get ready to go home, the baths have work here. The baths were heated black, it was so hot in the bathhouse, they set them up and dried them.” In the bathhouse, sheaves were placed upright on grates (specially installed poles) or directly on shelves. They heated it hot and dried it for two to three hours. They crumpled it immediately after drying so that the flax did not pick up moisture from the autumn air.

The crushing, carding and spinning of flax in Shirokiye Polye in terms of the content of the work and the set of tools do not differ from the same processes in the village of Lisitsyna. Therefore, we can give a “summary” story about the further processing of flax:

“And then they crushed it with myalitsa, it was already on the street, they had just dried it in the bathhouse. Myalitsa was big, “with a trough”, with a “tongue”, and with everything, and the roots were like legs. And here the “tongue” is so thick. Trusta is dry, so it breaks (the word “trusta” has several meanings, in this case it is the general name for brittle dry grass, here dry flax). With one hand they beat with this tongue, and with the other they drag the flax through. They pull me out again and beat me again. This is a muffin.

Then the thrower, it’s so flat and so narrow. I had one lying on the floor for a long time (the floor is here: the attic above the living part of the house). And so they cut through it with their tongue in order to squeeze out the entire bone (the stone is the lignified part of the flax stem).

And the last one, so round, is already melting, there are already such tufts of sedge from the swamp (a tuft, a tuft is a dried marsh hummock with evenly cut sedge bristles). And just like that, they shoved it into a box, and they also pressed it and dragged it through.” (When dragging a pastern (handful) of flax through a clump, the first usable fiber was obtained - otraps, these are the fibers remaining on the tuft. They were used for weaving bags and rugs, for twisting ropes. According to other sources, otraps were obtained by carding the flax with a special brush round pig bristle brush.)

“And then in the bathhouse the work is to scratch. And then the piece is so round with bristles. And so they scratch it all in the bathhouse. Women did all this - the men already had enough work, other things.

They comb out the search - the first to come are the rips - these are the rugs, and the bags, yes. It was our brother who was taught to spin - because it’s just waste, so it’s not a pity.

Then the rakes come. These ones are already better.

Then paches. These ones need to be spun well - they sharpen and that's all.

Well, and flax goes without saying - because it’s thread, and thread, and the warp is all linen.” (Actually, “flax” was the name given to the best part of the metacarpus, which remains in the hand after all the fibers of lower quality have been combed out with a brush. Dividing the fiber by quality into four “grades” - rags, rakes, paches and flax - requires a lot of experience and skill brush work).

“And they will comb, and so they towed and wove, yes, and put it when it is necessary to spin (a tow is a kind of “bundle” of fibers ordered by carding). And then to the spinning wheel (the spinning wheel is the local name for the spinning wheel) the knitting needles were so big, they would spin them, and they would make them, and with a knitting needle to the spinning wheel, and with a motor-trouser all around the knitting needles, and they would tie them to the spinning wheel, and they would spin (a motor-trouser, a motor-trouser - narrow woven, braided or twisted a belt, sometimes just a rope, with which the tow is tied to the spinning wheel).

About seven years old they started spinning, small spinning wheels were made. Mother did not allow the flax to be spun, but the ridges and paches were spun. Just like holidays, girls came to visit with spinning wheels - on Varvara (December 4, 2009). Poor women don’t sleep at night, they spin flax - as soon as they kick, the spindle flies all over the veil. (To spin is to twist the spindle with a strong movement of the hand. From the above story it is clear that the spindle and spinning wheel accompanied the woman from childhood to old age, they were a symbol of the female share).

First, while the spindle was light, a stone spindle was put on the heel (lower end), and then, as soon as the thread was spun, it was removed. The spindle has become heavy and is spinning on its own. A spindle full of threads was called a sheet. From several sheets of thread, threads were wound into a ball (skein). The best threads - thin, strong - were used. The ball was placed in a basket and it spun in it when it was dangled on the sparrows. Sparrows are a kind of cross on a stand, and at the ends four spindles are stuck into holes. You can already count the threads wound on it. They wound so much thread that it was enough for the entire outfit. From the sparrow they already wound it onto a sparrow (a dugout or bast tree), which is also on a stand, and from the sparrow - onto a warping frame (warping circle), and from the warping frame they scurried around and equipped the camp. This is the basis.

And the wefts (threads for weft) were wound on a rock - a birch bark kivtsa (spool) was put on the iron end of the rock, and threads from a tense ball were wound onto it (rock, rock - a device for winding threads onto a removable spool-kivtsa with a rotating circle-flywheel). They sat down and spun around. Then this kivtsa with threads was put on a weft knitting needle and the knitting needle with the kivtsa was inserted into the weft. (Tresta, a strip of woven warp, is formed by the interweaving of threads running along the trusta - these are warp threads ("warp" - Zaonezhsky) and transverse threads - these are weft threads. The weft itself was also called the device for threading weft threads between the warp threads. Zaonezhsky weft is a dugout a wooden “boat” about a span long (span - 17.78 cm), inside of which an axle is inserted with a birch bark spool of thread (spool) put on it.

And as soon as the shutters are equipped, then they weave. (Stavins are a weaving mill. Equipping the shutters is a painstaking and complex task that requires a separate story).

Sheets, shirts, trousers, underpants, and bed sheets were woven from good flax. There were all sorts of dyes, they would dye the threads blue - they wove tartan and striped fabrics for underpants (Kletchanina and striped fabrics are checkered and striped fabrics. This coloring of fabrics was achieved by alternating when weaving dyed and undyed threads). The shirts were also made from thin striped cloth. And the bad stuff goes into rugs and bags - everything is homespun.”

Here we are, dear reader, and got to the peasant clothes, sewn from homespun cloth, without, however, disassembling the equipment of the frames. Now you know what a great work it is - Zaonezh flax, you know how it was.