Meuers’ corn maze designed for education, entertainment

BROTHERTOWN – Just in time to supplement their family income during a time of extremely low milk prices and to nurture diversity on their 180-acre farm near the east shore of Lake Winnebago in southwestern Calumet County, David and Wendy Meuer and their son Chris have begun a five-year affiliation with the international MAiZE company which has created more than 220 cornfield mazes in the United States, Canada, and several European countries this year and more than 1,500 in the past decade.

The Meuers have a milking herd of 40 Jerseys and Ayrshires on their home farm along State 151 just north of this unincorporated village. In addition to the site east of the highway that was developed for the activities accompanying the maze, they have converted several former dairy farm crop acres for growing many bushels of pumpkins (pie, miniature, and warted “super freaks”), squash, Indian corn, gourds, cornstalks, and straw bales that are available for sale.

Through their agreement with The MAiZE, which was founded in Utah by Brett Herbst in 1996 (the first known similar cornfield maize in recent times was in Pennsylvania in 1993), the Meuers are assured that The MAiZE will not design any other maze within a 40-mile radius. Other locations in Wisconsin this year are near Deerfield, East Troy, Lancaster, and Menomonie.

With the support of 11 local, regional, and statewide sponsors, the Meuers opened their agri-tainment attraction on a western slope of the Niagara Escarpment for the season Saturday, Sept. 19. It opens daily through Oct. 31at 9 a.m. Mondays through Fridays, at 10 a.m. Saturdays, and at 11 a.m. Sundays. Closing times are 6 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and Oct. 28 through 31.

As the central attraction, the 10-acre cornfield maze can be walked in about 20 minutes if no wrong turn is taken, but David Meuer expects many teenage and adult visitors to spend up to one hour negotiating the more than three miles of twists and turns that have decision points on the route. These are linked to eight sets of 10 questions, which are packaged as “passports.” Geared to differing ages and interests, the passport question topics include corn, television trivia, 4-H, religion, and songs.

Another category is Halloween, for which 10 multiple-choice questions pertain to the origin of the traditions of trick-or-treating and dressing in costumes, Halloween characters, a Sleepy Hollow rider with a pumpkin head, the location of the world’s pumpkin capital, the heaviest pumpkin ever weighed, the weight of the largest pumpkin pie ever made, and the number of legs a spider has.

The answer chosen will direct the maze walker to turn left or right, thereby lengthening or shortening the path through the 10 acres. Meuer says there is no guarantee on not getting “lost” and having to be rescued within the maze but noted that this happened with only a few of the visitors on the opening weekend.

What the persons walking the maze will not see are the designs, visible only from the air, which recognize several of the sponsors. These include the cheese wheel that gives tribute to sponsorship by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and the numbers 103.9, the “Louie the Cool Cat” logo for the FM radio station WVBO of Oshkosh.

Meuer hopes the overhead views of the maze available to thousands of pilots and passengers attending the Experimental Aircraft Association show this summer directly across the lake at the southern edge of Oshkosh have helped to publicize the venture.

“Planes fly directly over our farm when landing on the east/west runway, and air show performers come to our side of the lake every day to practice and warm up before the daily air shows,” he points out.

Baker Cheese of St. Cloud, which processes the milk from the Meuer herd into string cheese, is sponsoring six stand-up targets for a corn cannon shoot (a cash prize is awarded for a successful shot); Wisconsin Tubing is sponsoring an 80-foot tube slide; and Reinl Accounting of Chilton, Badgerland Financial, and 4 Seasons Electric of Chilton are sponsors of the hayride wagons. Other sponsors are AgriLand Cooperative, Service Motors of Fond du Lac, M & I Bank of Fond du Lac, and Pethan Air Services (air conditioning and heating) of New Holstein.

Entertainment centers include a plastic duck race station at which contestants will hand-pump water from a tank to float the ducks down a chute, a corn box in which children can play, a straw fort and jump, and an animal barn stocked with dairy and beef cattle, pigs, goats, and chickens. Meuer notes that the animal display is not a standard item in the MAiZE package but one that the family wanted to have.

Based on published 2007 population counts, Meuer is confident that the farm is a good location for such an attraction because the seven counties with a radius of 40 miles have a population of more than 1 million. Some of this year’s potential attendees, especially those coming from the south, will run into another maze before getting to the farm because the construction project on State 151 between nearby Calumetville and Pipe is not scheduled for completion until Oct. 15.

Nonetheless, Meuer is pleased with the number of school group tours, which were booked by mid- September. As part of their field trip admission fee, the school group children are entitled to a tractor-drawn wagon ride and either a pumpkin, gourd, or cob of Indian corn.

Three categories of difficulty will be offered for the school children walking the maze. A “corn in the classroom” movie will be shown to them, and eating lunch at the site is being encouraged.

The elementary school education campaign created by The MAiZE consists of customized agriculture in the classroom lesson plans and activity sheets for teachers, on-site displays, and the discounted field trip offer.

In addition to the school group fee rates, there are separate admission rates for age 12 and up and age 5 to 11 while admission is free through age 4. There is also an additional fee for a hay wagon ride. There is reduced admission for a 4-H special weekend Sept. 26 and 27.

To augment their agri-tainment and to open the season much earlier in 2010, the Meuers have planted 1.5 acres of strawberries that were looking good in mid-September with the help of irrigation. They intend to add another 1.5 acres of strawberries next year and will continue to draw sap from maple trees on the farm for making the syrup being sold at the country store.

More information about the Meuers’ maze is available on the www.cornfieldmaze.com Web site (click on Wisconsin and Chilton). The e-mail address is themeuerfarm@juno.com and the phone number is (920) 849-7816.