- The corn maze is actually six acres that's cut in the shape of Minnesota, including all of the counties.

It actually started as a part of the Rock River Pumpkin Festival and that's been, I think, eight years now, and for the last four years we've had a corn maze.

It started out with an idea of the former principal and myself, Mr.

Butsma, and I asked him if he wanted to do a corn maze.

The first year that we did it, it was actually custom cut by a professional.

And the last three years my nephew Seth Sprock has actually been doing the engineering and the designing.

(guitar music) - It's interesting in the how detailed that Seth was able to get county details cut out.

It is most definitely, distinctly, the state of Minnesota with the county lines and the shape and everything that... Well thought out and most notably the great state of Minnesota.

- It's actually done with a skid steer loader with a GPS and a flail chopper on the front of it.

And actually mounts a computer that has the map in it that coordinates that he follows with his GPS on his skid loader.

So he actually does a perimeter map first and then he designs whatever he's gonna do with the maze.

This year he did the state of Minnesota.

And so he designs that.

It took him about 10 hours, I think, to graph and design it.

And it took about four or five hours to cut it.

Actually, when I cut it the first time I used a tracking and I used it on the lawnmower and I tracked myself to the state of Minnesota so I wouldn't get lost.

Because I frankly did get lost and thought I was on one side of the maze and actually was on the other side and so it's kinda helpful with GPS even on my iPhone that I could track myself to know exactly where I went to get myself back out again.

(guitar music) - Did I expect the corn maze to get this big?

I did not.

It has blossomed with interest in ways more far reaching than we would ever expected.

We had over 1535 wrist bands purchased the day of the maze and we had seven flat beds with probably 40 people on a flat bed every two minutes going out there.

And so up to date I'm sure it's been over 2000 people.

- It's clean entertainment, clean fun, and for a lot of people that aren't associated with agriculture, an opportunity to get out on a farm, to walk through a corn maze and to see the corn, and of course kids'll snap an ear off.

They'll shell some corn.

And so it's the experience of being out in the open and getting some fresh air and exercise and walking through something that they probably saw on Facebook or saw on a paper.

It's been publicized all the way from the Star Tribune to the Etchin Enterprise and people have seen pictures of it and the probably to be able actually walk through it and say that, hey I walked through the state of Minnesota corn maze.

- [Narrator] Visit pioneer.org/postcards to catch up on missed episode and to find out more about your favorite segments.

This program on Pioneer Public Television is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.

Additional support provided by Mark and Margaret Yakel Julene in honor of a Shalom Hill Farm, nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Wyndam and southwestern Minnesota.

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