With fall in full swing, farms and orchards in Maine are offering plenty of perennial favorite activities such as apple picking, collecting pumpkins and going on hayrides.
But another, comparatively new activity has firmly established itself as a classic autumn tradition: Negotiating corn mazes. A simple Google search turns up nearly 20 different locations in Maine alone offering some form of corn maze to visitors this fall.
For the uninitiated, corn mazes are just what they sound like: Confusing pathways carved through corn stalks that by this time of year are taller than a grown person’s head, making for a delightful puzzle for both children and adults. For the farmers, the relatively new trend has proven to be a local favorite, so much so that a small niche industry has sprung up around the harvest-season conundrums.
“At this point, it’s pretty well established,” said Scott Skelly, founder and owner of Corn Mazes America of Janesville, Wisconsin, a website dedicated to corn mazes nationwide.
Skelly said he has been tracking corn mazes on the site since the early 2000s, and at any one time the site can list as many as 700 mazes throughout the country.
Skelly said corn mazes are a relatively new phenomenon. There are no records that he is aware of denoting the first such maze constructed in the country, but the trend appears to date back to the fields of Pennsylvania and other Eastern states in the mid-1990s.
Skelly said he suspects the phenomenon is an offshoot of hedge mazes, more commonly seen in Europe. They have become so popular, he said, that even children’s shows his 5-year-old daughter watches often feature characters running through corn mazes.
“It is kind of a pop culture thing,” he said.
In Dayton, a six-acre corn maze greets visitors to Pumpkin Valley Farm. The corn, which stands about eight feet high, is carved into an elaborate pattern which, when viewed from above, includes a birthday cake and the words, “Making memories for 20 years,” celebrating the farm’s 20th season offering the mazes, farm owner Keith Harris said.
While the Harris family has come up with designs for this and previous years’ mazes by just “hashing things out,” Harris acknowledges that the family doesn’t create the maze without help. There are companies that will take a design and map out how to construct the maze.
The Harris family works with The Maize Inc., based in Spanish Fork, Utah. According to the company’s website, it has designed more than 4,000 mazes since its founding in 1996. Brett Herbst, the company’s owner and founder, said he does about 300 mazes every year at farms all over the country, including in Maine.
The root of each maze, Herbst said, is the pattern, mapped out ahead of time and often based on suggestions or sketches from the farmers. Sometimes the company uses sophisticated computer software and even GPS technology, but “a lot of them are just done off a grid pattern.”
Once the design is worked out, Herbst said, the next step is to cut the pathways into the cornfield. It has to be done early, he said, before the corn gets very tall at all.
“It just makes it 10 times easier,” he said.
That’s how the Harris family does it. This year, Harris said, the family cut the pattern into the corn on July 15, exactly one month after it was planted. The stalks, he said, were less than a foot tall at the time. The weather, he said, did the rest.
“We had lots of rain in July,” he said. “Corn is a moisture-loving plant, so it grew well.”
The maze at Pumpkin Valley Farm offers riddles to be found at various stations throughout the maze. This is a common and important detail in corn mazes, Skelly said, as it gives participants more to do than just wander around looking for the way out.
“You want to be engaged as you’re going through,” he said.
Today, Pumpkin Valley Farm’s maze offers about three miles of paths snaking through 325,000 corn plants. Harris said it is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays, and during the week it hosts groups of schoolchildren on field trips.
As to why corn mazes became and remain so popular, Harris said he thinks movements such as “buy local” are the reason.
“People became interested in where their food’s coming from, and it’s drawn them back to the farms,” he said.
Decades ago, Harris said, local farms were more popular, but large-scale industrial farming put a dent in the wonder people had for the American farm. Now, he said, maze farms bring enough young people to offer him opportunities to teach people more about agriculture.
“We try to teach the kids that the pizza they ate comes from a farm, whether it’s the wheat in the fields, the cheese from a dairy farm, the tomatoes for the sauce and the list goes on,” he said.
Herbst said he thinks corn mazes serve as an antidote to a society that has grown too accustomed to virtual entertainment.
“I think people are really yearning for ‘real’ experiences,” he said.
A farm’s corn maze, Herbst said, offers its own sights and smells that combine into a unique activity for visitors.
“It’s just hard to experience that over the Internet,” he said.
A relatively new but robust fall tradition is the corn maze. There are more than a dozen, of all sizes and skill levels, scattered throughout farms and orchards statewide. Here is a list of just some of them:
The farm’s maze has been an annual event for more than 15 years now. It covers a total of six acres, and is located next to the farm’s pick-your-own pumpkin patch. Organizers say it takes about an hour to complete.
This farm is celebrating its 20th season of corn mazes. The current offering is on six acres of land, containing 2-3 miles of paths. It takes about 45 minutes to complete.
This popular orchard includes among its activities a smaller corn maze. It’s less than an acre in size, and designed with children in mind, but kids of all ages are welcome.
Available on Saturdays and Sundays, this maze has two options – a 15-minute walk for kids and a longer walk for adults that lasts up to an hour. The maze has posts for a passport game that visitors can play, and extra wide pathways this year to accommodate social distancing.
This orchard describes its mazes as “award winning,” and claims to be the farm with the longest-running annual corn maze in the state. Visit stations inside the four-acre maze for riddles, and if you complete the maze you’ll receive a free kids’ size soft-serve cone.
The farm offers a two-hour “farm pass,” which allows access to the farm, pumpkin patch and its five-acre corn maze. Register ahead of time on the farm’s website.
This maze occupies six acres of farmland. Organizers say kids can participate in a scavenger hunt inside the maze, and anyone who completes the hunt gets a free ice cream.
Open seven days a week, this 2-acre maze is small, but can be negotiated in less than half an hour. Ideal for kids, but organizers say adults love it too.
Looking for other fall activities? Check out Spectrum News Maine’s community calendar and be on the lookout every Thursday for our weekly events list.
