Map of the world's largest corn maze – photo by Tina Jett
Do you smell that? Autumn is here!
Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, apples… and pumpkins. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin roll, pumpkin bread, muffins, cookies, beer… You get the picture. It’s kind of an exciting time for my nose and belly.
I have only recently become enamored by the “other” pumpkins, though. Not the big, rotund ones that are fun to carve and scrape out while watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (mandatory tradition), but the odd guys. The green, white, and salmon-colored ones. The flat, wart-covered, and tiny. Ones with names like Baby Boo, Jarrahdale, Apple, Blue Lakota, and Tiger.
You can find pumpkins almost anywhere these days, even while you’re putting gas in your car, but the truly unique ones usually come from the mom-and-pop farms, and supporting them is another reason they’re our go-to vendors. Traveling to a pumpkin patch, to pick out your very own from the ground, covered by a sea of twisted vines and leaves, is absolutely the way to go. Lots of farms offer extra goodies, too, like hay rides, games, playgrounds, hot chocolate, and even a corn maze or two.
Recently, there was a couple that made the news for calling 911 from a corn maze, after they found themselves stuck in the middle of one, at night, after the farm had apparently closed down. I have to say that after going through my first one recently, and the world’s largest, no less, a) I can’t imagine how much harder it is to find your way through when it’s dark, the stalks are a few feet over your head, and you have to use a flashlight, and 2) if I had been lost inside the one I went through, in pitch darkness, I might be a little wigged out, too. Though, there is a highway right next to it…
I’m still mesmerized by how they are able to get the stalks organized to make all the different designs. GPS? I have no idea. Surely corn mazes have been around much longer than satellite technology. What did they use before? Aliens? Has to be the aliens.
Here are a few links to get you in full-on harvest mode:
- How to Pick a Perfect Pumpkin – This video from Shawna Coronado will help you know when to harvest your pumpkins, some different types available, and how long they will last.
- The World’s Largest Corn Maze- The corn field at Cool Patch Pumpkins is right here in Northern California, right next to the equally cool, old Milk Farm sign. It rings in this year at 45 acres.
- The MAiZE – Did you know there are companies that specialize in creating those images you see in aerial shots of mazes? The Maize is one such company, the world’s largest, in fact, planning out hundreds of designs each year across the United States and abroad.
- HalloweenAttractions.com – Need to step things up and add a hay ride or haunted house to the mix? This site will let you search by location and rates each on five different criteria, based on a scale of 1 to 10 pumpkins.
- Plant your own corn maze – Why not? Backyard haunted houses are so last year.
Tina Jett is an artist, writer, photographer, and world-explorer. Her husband describes her with the phrase, “It’s like she lives in a coloring book.” See how that vision influences the work on her 
