Woman Keeps Ancient Wheat Weaving Alive

PULLMAN - It's one of the oldest art forms in the world and has been practiced in most traditional grain-farming cultures for as long as history can trace - from the ancient Aztecs, to 19th century England, to the modern-day Palouse.

In Colfax, the art of wheat weaving is given both traditional and modern twists by Fern Enos, 55, who took up wheat weaving 17 years ago on her farm five miles east of Colfax.

With her husband, Lynn, Fern Enos purchased the farm 35 years ago. It's situated near the place where her great-grandfather settled after bringing his family to Washington via the Oregon Trail.

Enos still lives on the land, though it's now leased to a neighbor for farming. The only crop she now grows is "old-fashioned" specialty wheat for her weaving, which has replaced farming as her main source of income.

Enos is one of only a few hundred Americans who make their living with the ancient art.

While woven wheat is no longer used as a charm to ensure a good harvest, for Enos, it still has a strong connection to the land and to farming.

"I always enjoyed being able to do the entire process from the seed to the finished product," Enos says. "You plant the seed and it's really a challenge to produce a grain that's usable. It's just enjoyable to work with something you produced rather than something you bought from the craft store."

She grows three winter varieties and five summer varieties of wheat solely for her weaving. The variations of color and texture of the plants enable her to make the subtle effects of the delicate art.

"I've done a lot of different arts. I've painted and done pottery. But I really enjoy working with the limited color and texture," Enos says. "Wheat weaving is more like sculpture. You're working with form, rather than with color mostly."

Enos began wheat weaving as a hobby along with quilting and knitting, which she still practices. But she soon found she could sell "as much as I could make" and turned the hobby into a livelihood. "I usually have a couple of quilts in progress," she says. "But that's something to finish when I'm 80 or 90."

Though the final artwork is perishable - Enos says her pieces, unframed, will begin deteriorating in 15 years - there are wheat works hundreds of years old in museums and pubs in England, where wheat weaving is a traditional craft. There is evidence ancient people wove grain art in pre-Christian times.

"It's basically a simple craft," Enos says. "All cultures that raised grain made some sort of art. With folk craft they used what they had."

Some of the traditional forms used in wheat weaving can be seen in Enos' work, on display at the Our Town artist co-op in Colfax and at the Gran Partita art gallery in Pullman.

The traditional "fans" - made by farmers in England, Wales and the ancient Aztecs of Mexico - were made to bring good luck to the household and the crop. Welsh tradition says woven fans were made from grain at harvest time and hung from the roof of farming households through the winter. When it came time to plant the next year's crop, the fan would go into the ground first, carrying with it the spirit of the wheat.

In addition to traditional forms, Enos makes swans, standing wheat dolls and framed works of her own composition. Because of the intricacy of the work - tight braids that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle - Enos says it can take as much as a year to develop a working original design. The framed pieces, protected from dust, can last 100 years, she says.

Enos compares her selling of woven wheat to fruit growers selling fruit and jams at roadside stands.

"This was a neat way to market what we can grow already," she says.