This beautiful and strong fiber comes from the stalks of industrial hemp plants. The stalk is retted (the process of preparing the stock for scutching or softening) in the field (dew), in water pools or enzyme processes, the outer bark (strick) of the stalk is removed which exposes the woody inner core, the hurd. The retted bark is hackled (run through a coarse set of spikes) to separate it into coarse fiber lengths. This hackled bark is then fed into a carder to remove the short fiber product, the tow. The combing operation takes the long line fiber, straightens it and generates the beautiful long spinning fiber, sliver.