brown beneath, green above,

blue aloft, yellow on top

The old Innviertel flax riddle describes the stages flax passes through from sowing to drying after harvest: 

Brown flax seeds are sown.

Green stalks grow up to a metre tall.

Blue flowers open. 

Seed pods, known as bolls, are harvested. 

The plants are pulled up and placed in bundles to dry, until they are yellow.

Flax is an annual plant, and is also known as linseed. Flax seeds contain linseed oil; the stalks of the plant are processed into thread. 

But the processing was hard work. To remove the stalks from the seed pods, they were pulled through a flax comb in bundles. The flax was spread out in a field for three to five weeks and softened in the sun. The stalks were roasted to loosen the fibres and separate them from unusable material. The prepared stalks were then broken open with a tool known as a brechel, or breaker, which exposed the sought-after fibres within. These were then released from the woody parts and combed. The delicacy of the fibres determined the quality of the linen that they would produce. 

Up to 20 fibres could be harvested from each stalk and spun on a hand spindle or a spinning wheel. The spun yarn was wound into skeins and then boiled in a wood ash and bone solution to make them soft and pliable. Then the yarn was wound onto small bobbins, which were used for weaving.

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The enormous amount of work involved explains why disputes about continually simmered between the poor linen weavers and the rich linen traders. The products of Ried linen weavers were not only highly prized in the region. Traders and trading houses sold them far beyond the Innviertel. 

The large hand loom is an indication of the importance of textiles production in Ried. It came from the workshop of Berta Schatzdorfer (1902 - 1974). She was the last weaver in Ried.