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Amazing Mazes, for Fun in the Fall

August 25, 2009 - DAYTON -- "Who would have thought getting lost could be so fun! So come GET LOST – in our maze!"

That's the invitation extended on Dayton's Pumpkin Valley Farm's Corn Maze Web site. Owners Keith and Angela Harris point out that in addition to navigating the maze located near the scenic Saco River, there's the fascination of the farm experience.

Keith Harris says the maze is a way for the family or a group of people to spend a few hours of good clean fun. But make sure you count on spending an hour or hour and a half to go through because it will easily take that long to navigate their 5-acre maze.

Keith is affiliated with The MAiZE, a cornfield maze company located in Utah. They help design the challenging courses that change from year to year. When the corn is about 6 inches high, representatives from The MAiZE cut the design into rows where 8-foot-high corn stocks line alleys through the field with lots of winding twists and turns, dead ends and room to rest.

Maze-goers can try to navigate their own way through the maze or use a passport. Each passport has 10 questions. Keith said stations are set up throughout the maize. At each station, individuals are asked one of those multiple choice questions. If they give the right answer, they are directed to go in the right direction. If they give the wrong answer, they are directed in a wrong direction (usually, they will end up back at that station again, and have a chance to give another answer).

Harris offers a choice of passport categories ranging from sports, trivia, Halloween and a special category for the kids.

Questions and designs change year to year. The Harris family started with a moose design. This year their theme is "Under the Sea."

"You can imagine how the course looks with all the octopus legs and tiny lobster tentacles," Harris said.

Every corn maze has its own unique offerings and design with various degrees of complexity, he said. Pumpkin Valley offers a corn box (similar to a sand box with 1,500 pounds of corn kernels), a corn launcher (how far you can launch an ear of corn), tire pyramid, kiddie play area, animal barnyard, slide tunnel swings, Cow Train play area and picnic tables. Fall decorative items – pumpkins, cornstalks, straw, gourds and more – are also for sale.

"It's the farm experience that keeps people coming back," Keith Harris said. "It used to be that someone had a parent, grandparent or cousin that owned a farm. Today, we're three generations away from the farm, and it's amazing how many kids don't have any idea of where they food comes from."

Barbara Peavey of Corinna's Thunder Road Farm's Get Lost in The MAiZE, calls membership in The MAiZE Co., being a member of a family. "We help each other and work together, rather than compete with one another."

Barbara and Charles Peavey operate the corn maze in conjunction with their vegetable farm. They offer the Cow Train, the Corn Snake, a course designed for kids, pumpkin patch and night mazes (also offered at other mazes). People take flashlights and glow sticks and navigate the maze.

"It's a totally different experience," she said.

Thunder Road Farm, off Route 7, gained notoriety when it featured the theme Red Sox Nation in 2008. This year, they are using a couple of popular local radio personalities as their theme.

Halloween and fall are center to corn mazes, and new to the industry this year is The Amazing Maze owned and operated by Sandy River Farms, Route 2, Farmington. They will be offering a Haunted Maze in addition to mini-mazes. For more details about The MAiZE family in Maine, including schedule and admission charges, visit www.cornfieldmaze.com/maine.html. For other corn mazes, do a general Web search or visit www.theheartofnewengland.com/travel/new-england/corn-mazes.html.

Because crops are growing a little slower from so much rain this year, Pumpkin Valley and Thunder Road will not be opening until mid-September or later. They will be staying open through the end of October.

This growing list of corn mazes in Maine is all of what Barbara Peavey calls the higher demand for agritainment, where more family farmers are turning their homesteads into tourist attractions in an effort to turn a profit.

The term, she says, is now considered a word in Webster's Dictionary. People want to come out to the farm and be entertained. It's an experience that can be enjoyed by the whole family, regardless of their age, from toddlers to people in their 90s.

By BJ BANGS, Special to the Maine Sunday Telegram August 23, 2009


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