October 1st, 2012 Permalink
Happy October! Before harvest, and popular in autumn around Halloween, fall festivals kick off a corn maze craze. Called maize mazes in the United Kingdom and labyrinths in Europe, corn mazes are a great way for farms to create income from tourism. This competition factor among Halloween fields of horror are also why these puzzles carved into the corn grow increasingly complex each year. The point is to solve the maze by finding a route from the start to finish, but many have “activities” and “secret” coded clues on dead end routes setup inside the maze. There are usually bridges, overlooking the maze both for viewing and for those folks who are a bit lost and need a little help with directions. Corn mazes range from family-friendly with additional attractions like hay rides, petting zoos, pumpkin patches and play areas for children, to very scary, haunted-house-type corn mazes. The farms decide on themes, the designs start on graph paper and then are plotted over the fields before planting. Farms and orchards grow specialty corn that is taller than most and very dense. These temporary works of corn art are usually huge, up to 45 acres, and are harvested in November. Here’s a look at the corn maze craze past and present, from aerial photos showing the entire theme-design, bird’s eye views from above, to inside the haunted corn maze. [77 Photos]
We think this is one of the most complex and interesting corn mazes in 2012. It wouldn’t be a maze if you didn’t get lost at least a little, but we think we might disappear and be lost in this one for a long time. It is a “15-acre cornfield maze with over 4 miles of twists, turns and dead ends featuring a technology-theme with complex additives of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” part cyborg, Steampunk, circuit boards, nanotech, robotics, medicine and math at Treinen Farm near Lodi, Wisconsin. Treinen Farm reported, “Our da Vinci guy is a cyborg–note the ray gun hand and the mechanical wing, not to mention the assorted gears for joints and a clockwork heart…Cyborg guy is shown not in a circle/square deal like da Vinci’s, but in the planar projection of a hypercube…The gears are a nod to mechanical technology, especially the steam-era –aka Steampunk…The knot-like thing in the lower left is, well, a knot, because knots are mathematically interesting.” It’s very impressive! Photo #1 courtesy of © Treinen Farm
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