William and Kate visit a  flax farm in Co Tyrone - video Dailymotion

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The Princess of Wales has thrown herself with gusto into operating an old-fashioned “flax brake” during a visit to a County Tyrone farm. The farm, run by husband and wife team Helen Keys and Charlie Mallon, aims to rebuild a sustainable flax-to-linen supply chain in Northern Ireland.  Helen and Charlie have been restoring heritage machinery from 1941 to produce natural fibre products “from field to fabric”.  She was previously awarded an MBE for her work in part for work in this area.

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00:00Hello, this is my mother, Margaret, my wife.

00:30This is the staff, is this coming out from behind you here?

00:52Yes.

00:53It's amazing, it's quite a steep terrain.

01:00So this is this year's crop, and a lot of people will tell you you can grow a great course back in a flat ground,

01:08but as you can see, you can absolutely grow them out.

01:11It's just because to use machinery, we need to grow it in a flat ground,

01:15but we actually do all our harvesting by hand.

01:18And you just literally can see a good screen and just pull it out of the ground.

01:23It's quite a nice thing to do.

01:24And the screws on it only because you're a couple inches higher and it starts to fall in the middle.

01:28Yeah, that's right, it's pulling up.

01:31And when do you have it then?

01:33In mid-August, usually.

01:35We're going to try and plant a bit earlier next year, I think we'll go in the season.

01:38It might be better to go a little bit earlier.

01:41Yeah.

01:42And I really can't believe all of that, everything.

01:51I think you can get a waste really, you can use the things, you can use the seed,

01:57you can use the seed, the seed, the seed, the seed, the seed, the seed, the seed, the seed.

02:00Yeah.

William and Kate visit a flax farm in Co Tyrone

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