When Turpin Fischer heard about the maze craze that has people wandering through cornfields around the country, he had doubts about the success of such a venture.

Pilots flying from Lunken Airport enjoy the best view of the 10-acre maze at Turpin Farms. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        Mr. Fischer is a member of the Turpin family that's been plowing ground near Newtown since the Revolutionary War. The farmer in him couldn't help but wonder: Who wants to get lost in a cornfield?

        “But then I took myself out of being a farmer,” he recalls, twirling a piece of straw in his mouth and grinning. “I thought, "Maybe somebody would.' ”

        Mr. Fischer's views on cornfield mazes took such a sharp turn that he built his own 10-acre labyrinth. He's banking that thousands of “somebodies” will pay for the chance to get lost in his cornfield.

        The Turpin Farm maze, which opens to the public today, is one of at least four cornfield mazes in Greater Cincinnati — and it's among hundreds across the country. The Maize Co., which describes itself as the world's largest cornfield maze company, designed more than 130 mazes this year; seven are in Ohio and five are in Indiana.

        Modern-day maize mazes are descendants of the confusing designs found in the artwork of ancient Romans, the floors of French cathedrals and the hedgerows of European gardens for thousands of years.

MAPPING MAZES

All Maize Co. mazes are listed at the company's Web site, www.cornfieldmaze.com.     This year, the company designed seven corn mazes in Ohio and five in Indiana, but none in Kentucky.

        The American version surfaced in 1993, when English designer Adrian Fisher and promoter Don Frantz cut a dinosaur-shaped maze through a Pennsylvania cornfield. The project drew thousands of tourists and launched a national maze craze.

        America's cornfield mazes take on all sorts of shapes: a barn with a silo and sun in North Carolina, a pair of horses in Oregon, a spider web in Denver and an Elvis on a farm near Memphis.

        “The designs range from animals to people to sports logos and scarecrows,” says Kamille Combs, marketing director for the Maize Co., which designed Turpin Farm's combination — a sunflower, hummingbird and the WKRC logo. (The farm is known for its sunflowers and humming birds, and the radio station is a sponsor of the project.)

        “This year 22 mazes have patriotic themes for the Sept. 11 anniversary.” Ms. Combs says. “They're things like flags, firemen and Statues of Liberty. Then we have a number that are tying in with the movie Signs — aliens and crop circles. No one maze is the same as another. "One of my favorites is in Iowa. It's the shape of John Wayne, and it looks just like him.”

        But from the ground, the pathways meandering through walls of 7-foot-tall corn plants look like perplexing, agricultural puzzles for city folks who've never lifted a bale of hay or fed a chicken. That brush with farm life seems to be the attraction for maze visitors.

Seven-foot-high walls of corn line the paths in the Turpin Farm maze (Ernest Coleman photo) | ZOOM |

        For farmers who operate the mazes, the attraction is economic. The 1,000-acre Turpin Farms has been a grain and sod operation, with a small gift shop and nursery. “We wanted to do something that was kind of agri-tainment as another type of income for the family,” Mr. Fischer says. “We decided why not give this a try.”

        Tim and Leslie Nogle, who farm on 145 acres between Lebanon and Dayton, have a similar story. Their income always has relied on the sale of corn, beans and cattle.

        This year, however, they brought in the Maize Co. to create the “Incredible Maze of Warren County,” a 14-acre cornfield replica of the Wright Brothers flyer for which the Dayton area is famous.

        “We've lived on our farm for 30 years,” says Ms. Nogle. “We want to stay. We don't want to sell out to developers. But we want to offer the community something that is really good to let them see that farming has a value, not just in agri-tainment, but to the economy.”

        The Nogles believe the farm has become too far removed from people's lives, and they want to promote agriculture education through school field trips and family outings.

        “A lot of kids don't know where their cornflakes come from,” Ms. Nogle says. “And there are 3,500 uses for corn that people never dreamed of.”

        Designing, building and maintaining a cornfield maze is a complicated feat, Mr. Fischer says. “We had to totally change our mentality about how you plant. Usually when you plant corn, you want the highest yield possible. But we went with low-yield and excellent root strength (to help the plants withstand the toll of thousands of humans traipsing through them).

        “Our biggest fear is people cutting back and forth through the maze.”

        Like all farmers, those with cornfield mazes must overcome extreme weather conditions, such as this year's heavy spring rains and long summer drought.

        Glencairn Farms in Boone County, which operated its first cornfield maze last year, had to drop plans for a second maze when drought conditions damaged the field.

        As a first-time maze operator, Mr. Fischer also wasn't sure the design would really come out looking exactly like the drawings. But as he stands on a bridge near the center of the sunflower design, he's happy with the results.

        “This should be a lot of fun,” he says.
       

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