Tell Me About It: A maze of maize

1. When do you plan the maze, and what’s in store for this year?

My son, Tom, thinks up the mazes in the wintertime and plans them all out, draws them all out. We actually cut them out in June. In the mornings, we pick strawberries, and in the afternoon, we cut the corn mazes out. It takes about a week.

2. Is there a theme this year?

It’s ancient Egypt, so we have a pyramid and a Sphinx, different Egyptian objects cut into the corn.

3. How long are the corn mazes?

It’s an eight-acre maze, and we find it’s about the right distance. It’s challenging, and yet it’s what people enjoy. From past experience, it’s the right length for most people.

4. How long does it take people to get through it?

Usually about an hour.

5. How do you actually go about placing the design in the corn?

When the corn is about a foot tall, we put flags in the corn in the pattern of the pictures we want to cut out. We just go from flag to flag and cut that out like that. We go up in an airplane and look down and take pictures from an airplane, and it looks neat. We want a maze that is fun to do and looks like the pictures that go with the theme. It’s not only walking around and passing the corn, it actually has a meaning.

6. What do you use to knock down the corn?

We just hoe it out with a garden hoe. We figured out one time it’s about 40,000 stalks we take out to make the patterns.

7. How long does it take to make the maze?

It takes about a week with five or six high school and college students helping out.

8. How did you start doing this?

We had the cider press, and we just wanted something to go along with that. So 1999 was our first corn maze, and it started out with kind of a simple corn maze. Then we just got a little more complex each year and nicer pictures. It’s been fun. People have really enjoyed it.

9. How many people visit the maze each year?

Every year is different. It depends on the weather because if it’s nice sunny days on the weekend, there’s a lot of people coming, and if it’s raining they don’t come.

FINDING THE CORN MAZE

Suter’s corn maze is located two miles south of Pandora on Road R. It’s open 1 to 7 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays until the first weekend in November. It’s also open Monday through Friday for school groups.