How a Kentucky broom-maker is trying to bring back a once thriving crop

Broomcorn harvesting used to be a major part of the U.S. agriculture industry before being swept away in the 1990s, but one Kentucky craftsperson is looking to bring it back.

Artisan broom-maker Cynthia Main of Sunhouse Craft in Berea and her partner Doug Stubbs have been partnering with Bryce Bauman at Lazy Eight Farm in nearby Red Lick to raise the crop. On a recent September weekend, they brought in their third harvest together since 2022.

“(Bryce) has really got the growing down, so this year we’ve been focusing on the threshing and processing of the crop so we can get to the point where we’re putting it in bales,” she says.

What is broomcorn?

According to the University of Kentucky Extension Service, broomcorn is not corn. It’s a type of sorghum used for making brooms and whiskbrooms. It comes in natural colors as well as purple and other fall colors.

Broomcorn used to be a thriving industry stateside, with annual production averaging 41,000 tons per year from 1915-1965. But in the three decades that followed, production took a steep drop to just under 12,000 tons. That was because of a number of issues ranging from production moving south to Mexico where labor was cheaper, the introduction of plastic brooms and the widespread adoption of carpet in American homes. Then the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came along in 1994, a kiss of death that led to another thirty years of constant decline leaving very few, if any, commercial producers of broomcorn remaining in the United States.

That void, coupled with Main’s focus on sustainability, is what’s driving her to bring the crop back. Since opening Sunhouse Craft in 2022 she’s focusing on working with local farmers, artists and other creatives as much as possible, but looks to do so even more as they scale up the harvest in the years to come.

“We don’t want to become distributors, but we do want to grow everything that we use in the shop,” said Main, who added Sunhouse already uses locally sourced wood in its broom handles as well as local dyes in all of its products. “In the long run we’d like to have all of our materials be locally sourced.”

To accomplish this, Main and Lazy Eight Farm would need to double their harvest to approximately six acres from the three it’s currently at. It’s a big task but one she’s confident they can accomplish now after restoring an early 1900s threshing machine that removes seeds from the broomcorn, saving time and allowing them to calculate actual yields from the field.

How much is a broomcorn brush, sweeper or broom?

Main says most of their merchandise for sale uses the broomcorn they harvest. Prices for hand brooms, brushes, dustpans, sweepers and more range from $12-$185. After opening in 2018, their store got some national attention in New York Magazine, and Garden & Gun honored them as the runner-up in the craft category for their 10th annual “Made In The South Awards” in December 2019.

A short crop in year one yielded wreath kits and floral arrangements and in year two she made broom-making kits equipped with broomcorn and a comb made by Stubbs, to thresh it with.

A recent harvest party included several workshops from woodworking for broom-makers to Appalachian-style full-sized broom-making and traditional brushmaking with members of the community traveling in from as far away as Switzerland, Maine and California. Main said the occasion reminded her of the Missouri farming community she lived on prior to moving to Berea in 2018 to take part in the city’s artist accelerator program, which provides studio/gallery space and a $1,200 monthly stipend a year to relocate to the Madison County town.

“Connecting people to the land through craft is something that’s always been important to me,” Main says. “I get to be one of those transitional people, because there’s a lot of new folks in the craft. When I started there were like 10 people under 40 making brooms in the country. It’s been cool seeing the craft come back.”

This comes after a summer that’s seen Main build her network even more while at her first wholesale craft show in New York, leading to an influx of business. Furthering that progress is a $10,000 Backing Small Businesses Grant from American Express in partnership with Main Street America that Sunhouse Craft received earlier this year.

“We need to scale up our natural dye situation, so that’s our next big equipment project,” Main says. “We have another broom stitcher sitting in our yard waiting to be restored, but aside from that we’re excited to keep scaling our equipment to grow it all here.”

Sunhouse Craft

Where: 414 Chestnut St., Berea

Hours: Thursday–Saturday 12–6 p.m., closed Sunday-Wednesday

Online: SunhouseCraft.com

This story was originally published October 1, 2024 at 4:59 AM.