EASTON — “Little John” Holzwart sat inside a tent, cutting the ends off pieces of broom corn and depositing the stalks in a tall bucket of water.
The broom maker set up shop at the Washington County Fair, next to the Farmers Museum and near a banjo-playing bowl turner, a woman throwing pots on a pottery wheel and a man weaving the back of a chair.
Karissa Wright of North Carolina, whose husband is at the fair to put on a bike show, said she has attended many fairs and has never encountered a broom maker.
“I’m slightly obsessed with history,” said Wright, who watched Holzwart with her children, Abigail and Jakob. “I was like, ‘We can see the animals later. Let’s head over to this area and check it out.’ ”
Holzwart said his job at the fair is to educate and entertain, as he explained the history of broom making, interjecting with the occasional joke.
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“You know why the broom maker was late for his meeting?” he asked 7-year-old Abigail Wright. “He overswept.”
Holzwart, who lives in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, is a full-time broom maker as well as a beekeeper with a passion for edible and medicinal plants. He made his first broom in 2005 at a pagan festival in Milwaukee, where he was selling incense, candles and tapestries.
When the automotive interior parts factory he worked for in Wisconsin closed, he cashed out his 401K, paid off his house and took to broom-making full-time.
“I’d rather not work for someone else again,” Holzwart said. “I kind of really enjoy the freedom of this.”
His brooms, which can be bought at the fair and online at broomsbylittlejohn.com, cost between $35 and $70.
He said most brooms bought at big box stores come from Mexico or China and have substandard filler, which makes them less expensive, but also makes them fall apart faster. He calls it “built-in obsolescence.”
“So that within six months or a year you have to buy another broom again,” he said.
His brooms have an average lifespan of 15 years, he said. He attaches a loop to all his creations so people can hang them up.
“You don’t want to lean a broom in the corner,” he said, “because the bristles will get bent over and that will shorten the lifespan of your broom dramatically.”
Holzwart’s tent at the fair abuts a garden full of tall broom corn, which isn’t corn at all.
Broom corn, the seed head of big grass, is native to Ethiopia in Africa.
“The most common story is that Benjamin Franklin got a whisk broom from someone in France in the early 1700s and he picked some seeds off of it and that grew as an ornamental in Philadelphia gardens for a lot of years,” Holzwart explained. “A lot of historians believe, though, that broom corn came over with African slaves.”
Broom corn was a major cash crop across the country, Holzwart explained. A farmer in Hadley, Massachusetts named Levi Dickinson became a well-known broom maker and started his own factory.
“And it was a sweeping success,” Holzwart joked.
