Rob Stouffer doesn’t utter a series of incantations when he designs a corn maze, but the GPS technology he uses seems equally mystifying, especially when he’s standing in the middle of a muddy field in Sturgeon County.
Stouffer, owner of Missouri-based Precision Mazes, visited Prairie Gardens and Greenhouses near Bon Accord earlier this month to help owner Tam Andersen cut out the pathways through a 10-acre cornfield. Together they hardly even said abracadabra. Yet by August, when the corn is 10- to 12-feet high, four mazes will branch off a single pumpkin design to make one big mind-boggling, magical puzzle.
Stouffer refuses to label himself as an artist. He has a masters degree in business administration and a penchant for working with computers.
“I have a farming background so in 2001 when a farmer asked me to design a corn maze for him, I flippantly said yes. That led to three other mazes that I did that summer. I now build mazes in 30 different states. But I was smart enough to know I’m not an artist,” Stouffer said.
The cow-corn in Andersen’s field was planted at the end of May and was about two inches high when Stouffer came to help supervise cutting the pathways for the maze. But Andersen, who previously designed some of her own mazes, explained that it’s much easier to do the work now, before the corn gets too high.
“This isn’t sweet corn, it’s number two animal-feed corn and it grows about one foot per week. The first time I did it myself I drew out a circle and I had a rope but I didn’t grasp how high that corn gets. It will be higher than my head,” she said.
Stouffer and Andersen worked over the winter to design the pattern for the four mazes. Then it took them two days to outline and cut the puzzle through corn using a rototiller and Stouffer’s GPS.
“It’s a professional GPS, and different than the one you might have in your car. With yours, it might be plus or minus 10 feet and if you are in the ditch, it shows you there. But this is more precise. This shows exactly when I am off the beaten path. It tells me where I am and where I need to be, then we mark the path with fluorescent orange paint and cut it,” he said.
The overall Prairie Gardens project is being billed as the world’s largest interactive maze with some 16,123 feet of pathways. By August it should be high enough to get lost in and each maze will take about half an hour to complete.
