BEREA, Ky. – A Kentucky broom maker is trying to bring back a once-thriving crop – 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 has a coarse, fibrous head that has been used to make various types of brooms for several hundred years.

In the late 18th century, New England farmer Levi Dickinson discovered that the material was superior when it came to capturing dirt and dust.

Broomcorn harvesting used to be a major part of the U.S. agriculture industry before dwindling in the 1990s. Today, Cynthia Main, of Sunhouse Craft in Berea, and her partner, Doug Stubbs, have been partnering with local farmer Bryce Bauman, of Lazy Eight Farm in Madison County, to raise the crop. As of now, they grow three acres of broomcorn.

Sunhouse uses the broomcorn they harvest, making such items as hand brooms, brushes, sweepers and more. Main also uses broomcorn to produce wreaths, baskets, autumn displays and floral arrangements.

“It’s a unique crop and it takes roughly 50 plants to make a full-size broom,” Main said. “I’m not a farmer, I’m a broom maker, which is why I partnered with Bryce. I’ve tried to partner with different farmers, but Bryce is an excellent organic farmer. We’re both practical business people and wanted to see if this crop and this fun project was viable. We’d like to see crops like this come back to the U.S. There’s a lot of talk about growing things on the farm and bringing them to market.”

Broomcorn used to be a thriving industry nationwide, 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 due to 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.

That void, coupled with Main’s intent on sustainability, is what’s driving her to bring back the crop. Sunhouse Craft opened in 2022, and Main’s drive is to work with local farmers, artists and other creative subjects as much as possible. The trio just finished up their third harvest season of broomcorn.

“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,” Main said. “We want to grow everything that we use in the shop. We already use locally sourced wood in its broom handles as well as local dyes in all of our products. In the long run we’d like to have all of our materials be locally sourced.”

Main enjoys connecting people to the land through this craft. She attended her first wholesale craft show in New York recently, leading to an influx of business.

“I get to be one of those transitional people, because there’s a lot of new folks in the craft,” she said. “When I started there were 10 people making brooms in the country. It’s been cool seeing the craft come back.”

Berea is a liberal arts college, not a craft or art school, but nonetheless students there make brooms by hand, in the country’s longest continuously operating broomcraft workshop.

The brooms that are made at Berea College, in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, aren’t just for sweeping. Some have been made with broomcorn that’s been dyed a fiery red or deep purple, and often there’s intricate braiding where the bristles connect to the handle. Coveted by craft aficionados, these brooms are decorative objects, worthy of being hung on a wall.

“There’s something very nostalgic and wholesome about a handcrafted broom,” said Aaron Beale, associate vice president for student craft at Berea College. “It’s an object rich with meaning, beyond its practical purpose.”

The roughly 5,000 brooms made each year at the college are sold through a website and distributed to a number of specialty craft shops. According to Beale, Berea’s broomcraft workshop is the only one in the country to dye significant quantities of broomcorn, which requires a lot of time. And the brooms sell out quickly.

“We work at a fever pace to keep up,” Beale said.

From its inception, the college had a labor program intended to help students cover their expenses. The school’s founders wanted to dignify manual labor. To this day, every student works 10 hours a week, earning them a modest paycheck.

Around the turn of the century, the college’s third president, William Frost, went into the surrounding mountains to recruit students, and he bought traditional crafts, such as weaving and woodworking, from individual households along the way.

“Frost recognized that he could use the marketing of traditional Appalachian crafts as a way to promote the college on fundraising trips the Northeast, where people were very curious about Appalachia,” Beale said.

The student craft program began in 1893, with weaving, eventually adding broom making, woodworking and ceramics.

In 1920, the college opened its broom making workshop, so that men who were assigned to work the college’s farm would have work to do in the winter. At its peak, the workshop was producing more than 100,000 basic floor brooms a year, which were sold in bulk to distributors. But the operation wasn’t profitable, so in the 1930s the workshop shifted its focus to making small quantities of finely crafted decorative brooms. The department name was changed to Broomcraft.