Corn Maze Builder

Maybe it’s the sheer excitement of being utterly, and safely lost.   The camaraderie of the group working together. Figuring out how to find that elusive, single exit.  Or, just the nostalgia of being “back on the farm”. Whatever it is...everyone seems to like getting lost. in a corn maze. And corn mazes are a booming business…not only across the Heartland, but around the world.

Brett Herbst says that corn mazes are, “really a magical formula for farmers.” Herbst graduated from Brigham Young University with a with a degree in agri-business.  But instead of becoming a farmer, he decided to help other farmers get into agri-tourism…creating corn mazes that help them receive a steady revenue stream that’s not dependent on weather or crop yield.  He says, “Keeping farms going as family farms is a rich part of the heritage of this country, so being able to help them is a pretty satisfying occupation in my opinion.” 

More than just perplexing pathways, Brett’s mazes are best appreciated from the air.  Works of art…with themes as varied as the farmers who create or suggest them. On a five acre cornfield is on Sauvie Island near Portland, Oregon. Craig Easterly was one of Brett’s first customers. “Our first design was a rose; then we did a blue heron, and it said Sauvie Island…and then the last three years we’ve done Lewis and Clark theme mazes. I usually give him an idea of what I want in the maze, I’ll send him photos or an image he puts it on a computer, that’s his secret.”

Brett says farmers start their mazes early, “When the corn’s short, about six to twelve inches tall is when we like to come in and cut the maze, we use our blueprints and we flag the maze out – so many feet by so many feet, almost like a grid pattern.”

Brett figures that he’s helped design and build more than a thousand mazes since starting his business. Some mazes draw more than 50 thousand visitors in the autumn.

Sherrie Reeder’s part of a fifth generation Utah farm family. They started building mazes about six years ago. That extra income helps protect the farm from developers who want to change farmland into new housing. Sherrie says, “We call it our gift to the community and that’s what we love to do. Hopefully we can stay here a long time. We have eleven acres, and there’s about, we figure, a little over 20 miles worth of trails in the maze.  You don’t ever hit ‘em all, if you do, you’re in there for days.”

Brett hopes to further grow his business and says that he’s most excited about how this form of agri-tourism helps keep farms afloat and allows city folks to enjoy a day on the farm, “It’s so much fun to see the smiles on the kids faces and educate them about the rich heritage of American agriculture.”   

www.cornfieldmaze.com

A-Maze-ing Facts:
At last count, the Maze Company was on track to create more than 180 corn mazes in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Portugal, Italy and the United Kingdom.