Preview: A Year in Flax

Foothills Flax Project founder, Ashley Gilbert, watering trial plot of a hybrid flax variety at Jacob Springs Farm, September 2025.

In 2025, the Foothills Flax Project initiated efforts to grow linen in Colorado. 

There were no tractors, no specialized equipment, and no guarantees. Just seed, soil, weather, and the slow accumulation of daily attention. Flax was planted, weeded, watered, watched, and eventually harvested with the help of friends and neighbors who showed up with curiosity, patience, and willingness to learn alongside me.

A Year in Flax is a record of that season.

This series will trace the flax growing cycle from start to finish. It will cover the practical realities—timing, density, weed pressure, irrigation—as well as the less quantifiable parts: the labor, the uncertainty, the moments of doubt, and the quiet satisfaction of working closely with a plant over time.

More than a how-to, this series is about what it means to rebuild a textile system from the ground up. Before there can be linen, there must be land. Before there can be a market, there must be shared knowledge. And before anything scales, it has to be tried—carefully, collaboratively, and in real conditions.

Over the next twelve weeks, A Year in Flax will revisit the 2025 season in sequence. After that, the series will shift into weekly updates from the 2026 growing season, continuing the experiment in real time.

This work was never done alone. It belongs to the many hands that helped tend the flax, asked questions, pulled weeds, and imagined what might be possible.

Thank you for being part of that circle.