Mazes a Growing Boon for Farmers

Brett Herbst is the king of the corn maze.

He carved out his first maze in 1996, after seeing a photo in an agricultural magazine, with no experience except mowing designs in his front yard as a kid.

After that maze drew 18,000 people in three weeks, Herbst created his company--The MAiZE. Now, he makes a living transforming cornfields into complex foot mazes, a sort of down-on-the-farm take on the hedge mazes found on English manors.

Since then he has designed and built mazes from Hawaii to Rhode Island, Louisiana to Alberta. This year alone, he has created 60 mazes and received 25 inquiries for next year, mostly from farmers struggling to make a profit.

“Farmers are trying to save the family farm. If it’s in a decent location, they can make a living,” said Herbst, who lives in Provo and holds an agribusiness degree from Brigham Young University.

That’s exactly why Rhode Island dairy farmer Louis Escobar called Herbst.

Escobar says the 10-acre, cow-shaped maze on his Portsmouth farm has kept him afloat.

When the price of milk dropped 28% in November 1999, Escobar was faced with some tough decisions. He decided that he would either have to sell the cows or get creative.

He found Herbst on the Internet and signed a five-year contract.

“It will turn a profit in our first year, we have already made the money to pay the taxes on the farm,” Escobar said. “I tell people this is the best cow I’ve ever had, and I’m gonna keep milking her.”

Glen Fitzler also is operating his first corn maze in La Salle, Colo., about 40 miles north of Denver. He’s providing fun while trying to ensure that his vegetable farm is passed on to his family’s third generation.

“It was [for] economical reasons. I’d like to give my son a chance to farm if he chooses,” Fitzler said.

But there are some drawbacks, he admitted. He’s running both an entertainment business and a farm, which makes for some very long days. Plus, there’s the occasional obnoxious teenager to be dealt with.

But he says it pays better than farming alone.

Herbst, who makes money by taking a percent of ticket sales, estimates his mazes cost an average of $30,000.

They aren’t a sure thing. As with any agricultural endeavor, the weather is always a waiting menace. This year, a windstorm flattened one of Herbst’s mazes outside Shreveport, La.

And where a successful corn maze grows one year, imitators follow the next. In the fields around Utah County, where Herbst started out, there are at least seven other mazes this year.

Herbst wasn’t the first to create the large-scale commercial corn mazes. That distinction is claimed by English maze-maker Adrian Fisher, who says he created the first one in Pennsylvania in 1993. In fact, it was a picture of his maze that inspired Herbst.

Fisher has created 63 corn mazes in his career but makes mazes out of many different materials.

He describes Herbst as a “keen lad,” but the two of them have different styles, Fisher said.

“He puts long, languid handwriting in his designs. I wouldn’t do that,” Fisher said. “But it’s sort of like looking at different painters. We each have a different style.”

From the ground, Herbst’s mazes are an endless series of twisting paths through the corn with occasional clues along the way. The miles of trails meander through the 7-foot-tall corn. With a good sense of direction, navigating the mazes still takes hours.

Aerial glimpses reveal a work of art, like inspired crop circles. Herbst’s complex designs include two fighting dinosaurs, a bucking bronco, a universe of planets and a bevy of bovines. All are created according to his farmer-client’s wishes.

Herbst creates the designs on a computer and carves them out with pesticide when the corn is still short. Any further detail, he says, is a trade secret.

“I tell people the aliens help,” he jokes.

As his business continues to grow and the competition gets more heated, Herbst said his hobby turned career is getting more demanding. But he loves his job.

“It’s still really fun,” he said. “I could never stop doing it.”

On the Net:

https://www.escobarshighlandfarm.com

https://www.cornfieldmaze.com

https://www.mazemaker.com