The Farmhand: News from Sanborn Mills Farm

Last spring, farm manager Ray Ramsey and gardener Michelle Smith planted a dye garden at Sanborn Mills Farm with an eye toward incorporating natural plant dyes into the Farm’s textile programming. Self-sufficiency is an important goal at the Farm, and that means growing as many of the materials as possible that are used in workshops, including growing plants to make natural dyes. Plants raised this year in the dye garden include Japanese indigo (Persicaria tingtoria), marigolds (Tagetes), weld (Reseda luteola), and madder (Rubia tinctoria) — all plants that have been used for centuries to make traditional natural dyes. A few weeks ago, fiber arts instructor Sara Goodman and program director Molly Bolick led a staff harvest of flowers and leaves in the garden to make Sanborn Mills Farm’s first batches of traditional dyes.

Sara points out that almost every indigenous culture in the world developed techniques for making dyes from plants. Creating these processes must’ve involved a lot of trial and error. The bright green leaves of Japanese indigo, for example, which look a bit like sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum), give no hint they contain the elements to make a blue dye.  

After harvest, the fresh indigo leaves are soaked in tepid water for two to three hours, then the leaves are separated from the turquoise-tinted liquid. The liquid is alkalized and then oxygenated to activate the enzyme that activates the pigment that had been present in the leaves. When the pigment begins to flocculate (create small masses), the liquid is ready to strain. The pigment becomes a kind of pudding. Once the dye is made, fabric is dipped in the dye once, twice, or several times, again depending on the richness of the desired final color.

The dye garden is, like so much else at Sanborn Mills Farm, a team effort. Sara and Molly helped guide Ray and Michelle in creating the garden, and some of the plants were shipped to New Hampshire by Jay Rich, a dye artist Sara knows who is based in Omaha, Neb. Staff helped with the harvest and setting up tents and tables for Dye Days processing. 

Learning to make traditional plant-based dyes and dyeing fabric with traditional methods will be a featured educational offering at Sanborn Mills Farm when in-person programming resumes (in 2021, we hope). The Farm will have a new facility for dye classes, too. Under construction right now adjacent to the Sanborn Barn is the Grange, which will have a complete dye-making facility in the basement. 

    

A strip of fabric after one dip in the dye. The greenish color changes to blue with exposure to air; the residue is washed off.