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Curious Iowa: How are corn mazes made?
Bloomsbury Farm brings design to life with precision ag technology
Sep. 18, 2023 5:00 am
Corn mazes are a fun fall tradition that brings visitors to farms across the country. The a-maize-ing intricate designs can be enjoyed through aerial photos. But how do farmers make those designs come to life at ground-level?
That question was posed to Curious Iowa, a Gazette series that seeks to answer Iowans’ questions about the state, its culture and the people who live here.
To find the answer, we spoke with the people who worked behind the scenes to create the corn maze on Bloomsbury Farm in Atkins.
Bloomsbury Farm is an agritourism farm, meaning it provides agriculture-based entertainment. The farm has a thick portfolio of attractions, from pumpkin patches to flower fields, hay rides, a petting zoo, slides and a zip line, as well as photo opportunities. The biggest attraction is the corn maze, a cob-tastic display of creativity and puzzle-making prowess.
How did Bloomsbury make this year’s maze?
There are different ways to make corn mazes. In the past, Bloomsbury Farm has planted corn in a grid pattern and hired Utah-based company The MAiZE to make the pathways into the cornfield to match a design. Clearing pathways is done by cutting stalks and using herbicide to kill plants.
Bloomsbury Farm owner Dave “Farmer Dave” Petersen said they are a progressive farm that tries to use as much technology as they can. This year, the farm turned to precision agriculture to plant corn in the maze pattern.
“I just thought it was time to try to see if I could do it, mostly just a personal challenge.” Dave said.
Bloomsbury Farm manager Sammy Petersen said precision agriculture eliminates the need to remove corn plants.
“This way we don’t have to take that step. We can just kind of eliminate that process and plant the seeds just were they need to be.”
Weeds will grow in the areas where corn is not planted. Before opening the corn maze, Petersen’s team freshens up the maze pathways.
The task of growing a corn maze starts with creating a design. Dave worked with a graphic designer from The MAiZE to plan what the maze will look like. From there, Hunter Vontalge, an integrated solutions representative from Bodensteiner Implements takes the design and translates that into a format that Petersen’s farming equipment can read.
Vontalge said that farmers like Dave pay an annual fee to have access to a high level of GPS signal that makes projects like corn mazes possible.
“You have to give the planter basically a set of constraints, you have to give it GPS coordinates that tell the planter when and where to turn on or off,” Vontalge said. “So basically I can just take the image from Dave’s graphic designer and I can correlate that with GPS data on Dave’s farm and then I can compile that information in what we call a boundary.”
Vontalge said the precision ag technology is worth $20,000 to $30,000.
“Between the tractor and the planter it’d be extremely common to be over a million dollars,” Vontalge said.
It’s easier to get lost in a corn maze than a regular cornfield because mazes are planted differently.
“The population is double what you would find in a regular traditional cornfield,” Sammy Petersen said. “So it’s a lot thicker … You can’t see the other pathways and such.”
Bloomsbury Farm planted the corn later than most Iowa crops — around mid-June — so the corn would stay strong for the farm’s fall festival. Even by that time of the growing season, Iowa had been experiencing dry conditions. That necessitated some adjustments.
“We actually lowered the planting depth to try to plant the corn seeds into a ground that has more moisture available [for] the seed to germinate,” Vontalge said.
When The Gazette visited the farm a few weeks after planting, Sammy Petersen expressed concern — not just for the corn maze. While Bloomsbury Farm is an agritourism destination, it is also a working farm. The Petersens grow a couple thousand acres of corn and soybeans and 20 acres of pumpkins. All of those crops can get stressed during dry conditions.
When The Gazette returned to the farm in July, Farmer Dave said he’d implemented practices to adjust for what he thought might be a dry year.
“We didn’t do a lot of tillage,” Dave said. “We tried to keep as much moisture in the ground as we could and it seemed to work out pretty well.”
The farm has a history of incorporating nonprofit organizations in their corn mazes. This year they chose Four Oaks Family and Children Services. The maze design incorporates Four Oaks’ logo. The nonprofit will receive a monetary donation from the farm at the end of the season. The farm also will host Four Oaks staff and foster families for a day at the farm.
In past years Bloomsbury has partnered with nonprofits like Big Brothers Big Sisters of Cedar Rapids and East Central Iowa, Camp Courageous and March of Dimes.
How did Bloomsbury Farm become an entertainment attraction?
Farmer Dave is a fifth generation farmer, making Sammy and her sister Jessica the sixth generation. The story goes that Dave’s wife Karen was the driving force behind the family’s foray into agritourism.
“My mom was from the city so she was happy to be on the farm, but trying to find her place, and she started [Bloomsbury] as a floral and landscaping business,” Sammy said.
Karen invited Sammy’s first grade class to the farm for a field trip.
“That just sparked the idea,” Sammy said. “She said ‘If Sammy’s class wants to come out and they enjoyed it, then why can’t we share this beautiful farm with others as well?’”
“She will joke that she rented a few angry geese as a petting zoo and it just kind of took off from there.”
Karen added a pumpkin patch. In 2004, a tornado took away the landscaping and floral business.
“Which, now we will say was the best thing that every happened to our family because we got to switch our focus completely from the landscape business into agritourism,” Sammy said.
Karen convinced Dave to go to a North American Farmers’ Direct Marketing Association convention in Toronto in the 1990s.There they were introduced to a concept that was just starting to sprout: agritourism. Agritourism was born out of farmers’ desire to sell their products directly to consumers.
“I met people that actually enjoyed it and were making money at it so we came home and we started dreaming and went to work right away.” Dave said.
According to The MAiZE’s maze map, the state of Iowa is home to five other corn mazes created by the company. Dave said they don’t worry about competition, from MAiZE’s other mazes, or others.
“We feel like everybody has their special thing and we’ve been here so long, I think that tradition is on our side,” Dave said. “Everybody has an opportunity here to do what they want to do and we’re happy to help them and that competition is good.”
Bloomsbury Farm’s 2023 Fall Festival runs Sept. 22 through Oct. 29. Find ticket information at www.bloomsburyfarm.com.
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Comments: bailey.cichon@thegazette.com
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