It is commonly used in combination with a dustpan.Ī distinction is made between a 'hard broom' and a 'soft broom' and a spectrum in between. It is thus a variety of brush with a long handle. Cost? Nothing but a little labor.Sorghum-made brooms with long handles as well as short handlesĪ broom (also known in some forms as a bumstick) is a cleaning tool consisting of usually stiff fibers (often made of materials such as plastic, hair, or corn husks) attached to, and roughly parallel to, a cylindrical handle, the broomstick. They would wear out - of course - but the remaining stems served as effective whips to guide or threaten beasts or brats. When the dried leaves were shaken or beaten off, a cluster of small, tough branches remained as the sweeping part of brush brooms.

Select bushes were cut at the end of the growing season and allowed to dry, which did away with the bitterness. The only critters that I ever saw eat the berries were robins. The whole plant, root to berries, is bitter to the taste, thus the “gall” in the name. They produce small, shiny green leaves and small, shiny black berries. They are tough from ground to end of every limb. Gall berries grow in moist woodlands two to six feet tall. This tool was composed of a bundle of gall berry bushes tightly bound with cord. Yards were cleaned, not with spring-toothed lawn rakes, but with brush brooms. (Chickens were not confined, could not be litterbox trained and left their droppings wherever nature demanded, including the front yard at the end of the steps leading into the house.)

Everything else, from leaves to chicken droppings, was swept up and removed. Any grass that intruded upon yards was smitten with hoes, in some places eaten by geese. Until relatively recent times, country homes were not surrounded by lawns.

They lasted longer than most modern people would expect and cost nothing to produce except effort from people who expected life to be filled with labor.īrush brooms were not actually brooms in the usual sense. This might seem like an ineffective tool, but those tough leaves left little dirt or dust behind and worked well when cleaning under beds. They were arranged in a bundle about two inches in diameter and secured with a strong cord wound in a spiral from base of the leaves to the cut end of the stem. At the end of the growing season when stems were dry, carefully selected plants were cut just above ground level. Called broom sedge (more often sage), this plant flourished in old fields allowed to become fallow (lie out) and in fence rows. Strong stems ended in a bundle of blades up to two feet long. Straw brooms, used to sweep floors, were made from a type of grass that grew tall, one to five feet. This included things used to clean houses and yards, notably straw brooms for houses and brush brooms for yards. From the frontier era through much of the 20th century, country folk made many of their tools and implements from resources readily at hand from nature or things they grew.