Good-bye City Life!
Stumbling Around the Corn Maze
By Vina Hutchinson Farmer
When Julia Bircher e-mailed me one fall with an invitation to A Day at the Farm’s Corn Maze, I wasn’t sure how to react. It sounded as though it had all the elements of a few things of which I’m not fond: being outdoors (with all the potential of getting hot and sweaty) and walking through plant life that attracts all sorts of stinging, zinging bugs.
My son Nick and I talked it over, and with his past experiences at the Corn Maze as a participant in A Day at the Farm’s summer camp program, he gave it a double thumbs up. We made our reservations.
OK, I know what you’re thinking: Corn? Corn! C’mon! We might as well bathe in the city water tower and declare ourselves stuck in TV Land somewhere between Petticoat Junction and Mayberry R.F.D. But I’m serious when I say it’s so worth a visit and you’ll have more fun than you could ever imagine. Nick and I laughed from the moment we entered the Maze until the time we left – both times, that is, but more about that in a moment.
A Day at the Farm is owned and operated by sisters Julia Bircher and Melissa Barnett, who have transformed their old family farm into a wonderful attraction that introduces children to farm life and offers a delightful setting for picnics and other gatherings.
The farm has been in the family since 1846: Julia and Melissa’s father, Woodrow McCoy, converted it into a dairy farm in 1947. The farm, which was phased out in 1993, was the last milk-producing dairy farm in Craven County. Today, the sisters give children a peek at the rapidly disappearing way of life in rural America with tours of the old kitchen, the old wash house, the dairy barns and more.
Children of all ages – including this author! – enjoy seeing the animals, especially the baby animals. (We got to see a baby calf on our latest venture but I will never forgot one memorable summer a few years ago when the kids – that’s baby goats to you city slickers – arrived.) And of course as always Abraham, the trick goat who has been featured on the Animal Planet channel’s show, World’s Funniest Animals, is still around. (And no, I’m not going to tell you what his trick is. You’ll have to make a reservation and go see for yourself.)
A Day at the Farm also hosts seasonal events at Christmas and Easter, in addition to its popular summer camps. A Pack House is available for parties, family reunions, Scout campouts and more.
But back to our Corn Maze adventure: Spooked by repeated references to Stephen King’s Children of the Corn, Nick and I headed off one clear Saturday night for the farm, which is located right off the Cove City exit on Highway 70. After a delightful hayride with a group from the Tanglewood Church of God in Kinston, we all divided into teams and headed off into the Corn Maze. Our mission: To find seven mailboxes and use the color markers contained within to answer questions about geometric shapes.
I’ll offer a handy tip: In addition to bringing your insect repellent, make sure you have an adequate flashlight, a spare and extra batteries.
We found the first mailbox pretty quick. As we meandered our way down various paths on a moonless night, Nick made the observation that in the failing light the various leaves on the corn stalks looked like arms reaching out for us. We both laughed a bit nervously. As it got even darker, we joked with each other by making references to Samara from The Ring and Scary Hair Lady from The Grudge. And then Nick scared the bejeebees out of me by smirking, “Is that a leg sticking out the corn?”
“No!” I said. “No reference to the movie Signs! We’ve got enough to worry about – I think the flashlight batteries are dying!” Sure enough, the light from our mega-kilowatt handheld shop light borrowed from Dad was failing and here we were stuck without a spare. It felt exactly like one of those moments from Friday the 13th when the victim walks into the darkened basement and, even after she realizes the light won’t come on, still keeps walking.
(And, to make matters even spookier, there was a leg sticking out of the corn. Morbid curiosity propelled us forward, when we found a scarecrow sitting on a bench.)
We wasted part of the hour we had to complete our mission in finding our way to the exit (mostly in the dark since the flashlight was dead) and sheepishly asked Julia and Melissa to loan us a flashlight. They were gracious enough to rustle up two.
We plunged back into the Corn Maze, laughing at our silliness but determined to find the other six mailboxes. We could see the lights from the other groups and hear they were having just as good a time as we were.
After walking around in circles and going down this path and the other (with Nick making the scary throat rattle from The Grudge although we did have one heart-stopping moment when he swore it wasn’t him), we finally found another mailbox. I forget what the actual answer was supposed to be but given my faulty math skills – plus my totally boneheaded move of interpreting the clue of “subtract your fingers and toes” as 10 and not 20 – you might as well know we got the answer wrong on that one.
Although we eventually found a third mailbox, it was downhill after that for our expedition. We managed to walk ourselves around in a few circles (later learning that we’d missed a mailbox by “that” much) and found two of the three mailboxes we’d already located. Finally when our time was up – signified by the blast of an air horn – we couldn’t even find our way back to the exit we’d found so easily before! Thank goodness for the lights around the picnic shelter. They gave us a guide to follow back to the entrance where we emerged defeated but laughing.
The Corn Maze is open during the late summer and fall months after the corn reaches its full height. The paths vary from year to year to keep the Maze a challenge to those who’ve visited before. Reservations are required. For pricing, times and reservations, call Miss Julia and Miss Melissa at (252) 514-9494.
