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also hold an annual workshop with other maze operators where you get the chance to share ideas and discuss solutions to problems you might be having. It all depends on how much you feel comfortable doing and what you want to delegate.

An aerial photograph of the maze’s design is a critical component to your promotion.

A good place to start the design process is to pick a theme. It is not uncommon for farms to partner with a group or charity and that may dictate your theme and infuence your design. For example, if your community is building a new hospital and they need to raise funds they might agree to be a partner in the maze. The design (picture) of your maze could then be the outline, the name or a unique aspect of the new hospital.

Perhaps your community or school is celebrating a special anniversary and they agree to partner with you.

It is a good idea to select a number of different themes and then approach the organizations connected to each theme to see if any might be interested in being a partner in your maze. You may also fnd that you will receive a lot of local media publicity, plus you may have some unpaid volunteers to help when the maze is open for business. Naturally, in return you would be expected to give a portion of the gate receipts to the organization that you are featuring. Typically, farms might give 10 per cent of the admission fee to the organization or charity.

You can draw your design on a piece of graph paper, and then scan the design into a computer so the design can be cut into your feld using GPS technology. The steps and approximate times to make the maze itself are:

• 10 minutes/acre to go around the feld so the GPS can record the boundaries of the maze

• 2 hours/acre to lay out the maze in the feld

• 2.5 hours/acre to cut out the maze (rototilling the paths)

• 1.5 hours/acre to spray herbicide on the pathways

Using the lines on the graph paper, you can then transpose the grid onto the feld using stakes. For example, if the design on the graph paper covers 30 lines on the page each way and you plant 150 rows of corn across the feld, you can put a stake in at the end of every ffth row, and mark off a

similar spacing along the other three sides of the feld. It will help to colour the top of the stakes so they are easily seen (yellow), then colour every

fourth fag (20 th row) a different colour (pink), so you can easily see where the stakes line up on each of the four sides of the feld.

When the corn is newly emerged, take the design and walk the feld marking the pathways using chalk, (“feldstrip” – the chalky substance used to line baseball diamonds and football felds). Put the feldstrip in an old antifreeze container and walk the path. Then come back and cut it out with a hoe or rototiller. If you do it when the corn is quite young, you can see the chalk line better and the corn comes out more easily.

A design can have 1 mile of paths in 10 acres or 2.5 miles of paths in 5 acres The time needed to chalk, cut out, and maintain the maze will depend on how complicated your design is. If we take an average:

• placing stakes out around the feld 20 minutes/acre

• chalking the feld should take around 7 hours/acre

• cutting the design using hoes should take around 11 hours/acre • spraying the pathways for weeds should take about 1.5 hours/acre each time

So, with a diagram, it takes about 20 hours/acre on average to create the paths, including staking and hoeing.