The Forest of legends

Welcome back to “A tour of Walnut Hill, Iowa”, and today’s prime focus isn’t the school! We are going back to another place where women were also allowed to work at! Back in the old days, some of the only jobs women could have were being a teacher (which is still prominent today), working at a broom-shop, like this one, or being a nurse. Also being a maid was acceptable, but the trend started to fade out later.

Brooms, Brooms, and more Brooms!

Brooms were a popular household item before vacuums came in. They were used to dust, clean, and even sweep an entire barn in some cases! Here, we have many different types of brooms, from little tiny handheld ones stocked on the shelves, to cleaning-sized ones hanging on little racks on the ceiling. Finally, on the shelves near the far left of the image, is broomcorn, which is usually shipped in large bales. Although in this tiny shop, they aren’t as big!

Machinery

The old process of making brooms started out with soaking the broomcorn in water. Next, once broomcorn was soaked enough to bend, it was ready to move to the binding machine.

“The person running the binding machine used their foot to make the machine turn and their hands to hold the broomcorn under the working wire that wraps the bristles onto a handle.” – Living History Farms (I don’t know how else to phrase that)

Since brooms are made in layers, the layers were wrapped around very tight to the handles by using wires, such as metal or twine.

Some brooms had shoulders, which look liked that they had a curved look at the top, as well as having two bundles of broomcorn on each side of the broom.

The shoulders had to be put on just right so that they didn’t flatten out. Once the broom had every single layer on it, which can range between 3-7 layers (most of the time), they were set to dry.

When they dry, brooms that use less broomcorn, such as a laundry/cake tester broom, won’t have to go through an extra step, while a house broom or children’s broom would have to go through the sewing vice. The sewing vice made the broom flat.

Finally, all brooms ended at a trimming board, which cut the brooms so each and every one would be even (or at least hopefully they would be!). All brooms would be used for different purposes. A house broom would be used to sweep the floor, while a laundry broom would be used to be dipped in water to sprinkle onto clean clothes before using a hot iron.

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