Shucks, it’s corny – but
Shucks, it’s corny – but lucrative
Cornfield mazes offer farmers extra cash. Except for the intense blue of the sky, the only thing Mike Fournier could see was corn. It surrounded him in a tight wall of stalks, rising above his head and rustling in the breeze, its golden tassels bobbing almost mockingly.
Behind Fournier was the narrow path he’d walked in on. Ahead were two paths and a decision: Which way to go? Here on the familiar terrain of Winding Brook Farm in Warrington, he was lost. “Now what do I do?” he said with a laugh. Corn mazes will do that to a person. Fournier, Bucks County’s agricultural extension agent, had agreed to test the maze more or less for professional reasons. Corn and other crops are his business. Others shell out up to $9.50 for the thrill of getting dizzyingly lost in five or six acres – a city block’s worth – of corn. Some mazes are homegrown affairs, like one in East Vincent, Chester County. Clyde Scheib, a 75-year-old farmer, simply climbs atop his mower and zigzags through his corn. It began as entertainment for his grandchildren and word spread. Every year, he adds to it, from the casket (old boards half-buried in the soil) to the snake pit (old hoses tossed in a ditch.) “I just do it because I get a kick out of it,” he said. Others are high-tech renditions with music, midfield rest areas and a “corn kernel” – as in colonel – to rescue the “corn-fused,” said Jeff Peiffer, who spends all year poring over computer diagrams to design his maze in Royersford. The 2.5 miles of paths and a game that involves finding various checkpoints in the maze are so complicated that Peiffer starts people off with a seven-minute orientation. Groups can race each other, punching in and out of the maze on a time clock. Hopefully, it’ll be the same date,” Peiffer wisecracked. A big maze in Lancaster County even has a live Web corn-cam and a pay phone in center-cornfield to call friends – or summon help. (Scheib’s maze has a phone, too, he says, “but I didn’t say it worked, did I?”) One maze has a UFO theme. Another is an after-dark haunted maze. They attract families, school classes and scouts who want to test orienteering skills. What all the mazes share, other than no restraint when it comes to corny humor, is a mission well beyond entertainment.
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