Broom Corn Harvest

By: Marieanne Coursen, Agricultural Interpreter.
When I first started working at The Farmers’ Museum in 1997, I worked in the Westcott Shop making brooms. Now I work here as a farmer and have had the opportunity to grow and process broom corn. I find this very satisfying as I like to know how to do things from beginning to end; that is why I grow a garden, bake from scratch, knit with yarn I spun myself, etc. Makes me a little crazy, but happy!

This is our second year of growing broom corn at the Lippitt Farmstead. The plant is not really a corn at all, although it really looks like corn except for the fact that there are no ears. It is actually a type of sorghum. Other types of sorghum are grown as feed for cows: my son grows it to feed to his dairy cows, and another variety is grown in the south for sweet sorghum syrup and is even being studied for use in ethanol production. The variety that we grow for making brooms isn’t good for much of anything besides brooms. The brushes are harvested before the seeds fully mature so there is no grain value, and the plant itself is apparently not very tasty since it is the only crop we can grow here at the museum that does not get bothered by the deer! The seed is sown in rows in mid-May much like corn but closer together in the row and needs to be kept free of weeds. Our broom corn grew very well this year:

Harvesting broom corn is very labor intensive. As the brushes developed at the top we watched them carefully. When the brush emerges from the sheath it is time to “table” it.

To table the brushes, we fold down the stalks between knuckles so that the brushes can continue to harden and mature but won’t bend over from the weight of the developing seeds.

It also protects the brushes from the frosts that are possible at this time of year. I get the impression that all the broom corn was tabled at one time in large fields but since we only grew a small amount we checked daily and folded them down as we thought they were ready. Once it was all tabled, we waited a few more days and then cut the brushes.

I did this with a knife this year instead of pruning shears like last year because that is how it would have been harvested “back in the day.” It was fun but I was very aware of the location of my body parts in relation to the swing of the knife – this could be dangerous. As I went along I left small piles or “gavels” of cut brush between the rows to be picked up later.

Once the brushes were cut and gathered, the outer sheath – a leaf that surrounds the base of the brush and the peduncle (a fun word for the stalk that is attached to the brush) – had to be removed. This is easily done by peeling it off.

The next step was to remove the developing seeds. A book called Broom-corn and Brooms found in our NYSHA Library suggests using a curry comb to clean small lots of brush. This was a suggestion that escaped me last year when I left the brushes to cure with the seeds on and combed them later with a three toothed hatchel found in our broom shop. This worked OK but the curry comb used immediately after harvest worked much better!

Next, the brushes needed to be laid out to cure. Our hop house has the ideal space for this since it has a slatted floor in the second story for hops to dry.

In 1845 broom corn was a significant crop in New York State as there were several broom factories in need of brushes. At the same time, some farmers would just grow a small crop to satisfy their own needs for brooms. Years ago I a made the fancy brooms that are turned out in our broom shop here at the museum, but this winter I will try making a simple twine bound broom for use in our barns from part of our own homegrown broom corn. The rest I will deliver to our current broom maker, Joan Noonan, in the Westcott Shop. The brushes used there today to make the fine house brooms are imported from Mexico and much longer than the ones we grew. But Joan will probably be able to make a whisk broom or two that can be labeled “Grown and Made in Cooperstown, New York!”

So, now that I’ve both grown broomcorn and used it to make brooms, I can confidently say that if I had to, I could produce my own broom! Maybe next year I will grow flax and make a shirt – or maybe not.