Margaret (Maggie) Settles makes brooms out of broomcorn.
The great grandmother has raised broomcorn and made brooms for several years as a hobby while growing up in rural Mercer County near Camp Creek.
She follows the same techniques as her parents and grandparents did decades ago.
What is more, the 88-year-old “Maggie” says she can still make a broom out of broomcorn better than you can buy at the store.
When you drive up to her house on Stoval Ridge you might notice bunches of sticks in neat piles, lumber near her kitchen-workshop, and a shock of corn nearby. Off to the side of the house are woods, where the woman finds her sourwood saplings that she prefers to use for broom handles.
Beyond the house, down the hill a short way, is a field where the venerable country matriarch grows her broomcorn. She harvests a crop in the early fall and sets about making her own brooms for the winter months. A broom has to last her through spring and summer.
“Now the field is bare, but we’re hoping to go back in August and see the broomcorn in full growth,” Settles says with a wink of her hazel eyes. “We have to wait until late summer before we can start making brooms.”
Settles, a country artist if there ever was one, makes her brooms on the back porch adjoining her house. It takes her nearly a week to turn out one of her handiworks, largely because her hands have become bent and gnarled with arthritis.
Sometimes, she hangs her sticks on the rafters of her back porch. They are used to make broom handles and walking sticks, or anything else that she happens to need during the year.
Settles has her broom straw spread out on timbers in one corner to keep it dry and flat and convenient for choosing and organizing as she makes her brooms.
When she harvests her broomcorn, the seeds are combed out of the tassel or head, exposing the shafts which are used for binding together and fashioning into a kind of fan-like creation.
Seeds that are not saved for planting the next year are simply plowed under in a nearby pasture.
Settles started making brooms mainly as a hobby when she was a youngster. “Just thought I’d make a few brooms,” she says. “And that’s what I did, till I gave away two or three dozen of them. The most expensive part of the broom is your time. A ball of twine that I weave with costs about $1. It’ll make five or six brooms. The cord I use is made of cotton. Nylon is too slippery, and you can’t keep nylon cord tight. But cotton won’t stretch. That’s why I use it.”
Settles uses a kind of carpet needle—bowed a bit so that it goes in and out of the stalks easy enough when she’s weaving the string through.
The petite, grey-haired granny says she prepares her soil and plants the broomcorn about the first of June.
“It’s just like planting corn, only I plant it a lot thicker, about every five inches apart. I guess if your ground is good enough, you wouldn’t have to use much fertilizer. It’s not too hard to grow. Lord, an acre of broomcorn will make enough brooms to fill the back of a pickup truck.”
Settles saves a portion of her seed for the next year’s crop. She says she doesn’t figure there are many stores that handle the kind of seed she uses for her broomcorn. She rarely buys any of her gardening seeds at the store anyway. She prefers to save her own seeds from year to year.
In broom making the old fashioned way, a broom maker has to lay the broom on a cement floor or in a long trough of some kind, cover it with burlap sack and pour scalding water over the broom to soften the stalks so that they will be pliable enough for stitching them together.
Then she leaves them under a wet sack for about ten to fifteen minutes, so that the string can be tied tightly around the broom to hold the stalks in place permanently, Settle explains.
A few years ago a neighbor gave Settles a handful of broomcorn seeds. That gave her the idea to make a couple of brooms.
“September is the best time for cutting the stalks—before frost—when the head begins to be pretty well filled out, while the seeds are still green,” Settles explains of her craft. “Then I go out and break the stalks about three feet below the top, and let them hang down. This helps the brush to stay straight. If the stalk is not broken over like this, the straw will become too heavy with seeds and begins to fall down and turn the wrong way.”
The soft-spoken woman notes that broomcorn should be cut while still green. “It makes tougher brooms this way,” she adds.
Some people like a red-colored broom. If the broomcorn is not harvested, or cut, until after it is completely ripe, the straw will be red, Settles points out emphatically. “The straw is more brittle, and the broom is not quite so durable, as one made with broomcorn cut before it is fully ripe,” she says.
But that’s ok for some folks, because they want to use the broom as an ornament more than anything else.
After she cures the broomcorn, she cuts the stalks in the shape she wants them.
Her brooms are generally three-and-a-half to four-feet long from the top of the stick down to the end of the brush. Then they’re ready to place on the broomstick. “But a hearth broom is just stalks—no broomstick.”
“These are the finest brooms you ever saw,” she says. “They’re perfect for sweeping your shoes off when you come in with mud or dirt on them during wintertime. A store-bought broom won’t last half as long.”
Settles says her father used to sell homemade brooms for 50 cents apiece during the Great Depression. Now the retired homemaker says she makes brooms out of broomcorn as a kind of novelty to amuse her friends.
“When I get after the brooms, I don’t have any trouble finding homes for them. Nearly everybody wants one.”
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Top o’ the morning!