When Mark Muchka said he was going to build a corn maze on a patch of land near Calgary, he was told he was crazy.
You can’t grow corn in Calgary, people told him.
Three years later Mark and his wife, Deanna, have turned the Calgary Corn Maze into one of the city’s top attractions. It ranks along with the Calgary Zoo, Calaway Park, Heritage Park and the Glenbow Museum, according to Calgary Tourism.
Mark and Deanna both grew up on farms near Acme and loved agriculture, but they chose to start careers elsewhere. Mark works for Alberta Agriculture as a tax specialist and Deanna works as a schoolteacher in Strathmore.
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The idea for a corn maze began in 2007 as the couple started to entertain ideas about how to get back on the farm.
Mark’s family owned a quarter section of land 15 minutes southeast of Calgary, which seemed to fit with the plan.
“We grew up on farms, loved being outdoors, loved animals so it was a natural fit for everyone,” said Mark.
The land had to be rezoned and by the summer of 2008 the couple opened the gates, offering a fun way to learn about farm life.
This summer they had 22 employees working the concession, supervising activities and tending the property where 27 acres are open to the public, including a 10 acre corn maze, while the rest of the land is seeded to canola this year.
“Our last day off was the February long weekend. You definitely just don’t open up at the end of July and close down in October,” Mark said.
The corn for the maze is a silage variety that grows three metres tall in a good year.
After the attraction closes in fall, the corn is cut and baled for livestock feed.
Each year, Mark plans the maze on a grid and starts mowing the paths when the corn is about knee high.
“The first year it took us a week to do it but this year it was a lot quicker,” said Deanna.
They also plant pumpkins to use for educational purposes.
Besides the maze and pumpkin patch, the farm offers miniature train rides, slides running off stacks of bales, playground equipment and jumping pillows.
There is also a petting zoo with chickens, goats, sheep, young pigs, miniature donkeys and miniature horses.
A website on which visitors can post their family photos with comments shows the popular attractions.
“I have a million photos of kids climbing the hay bales or sitting on the rail fence or you’ll see photos of kids picking up a pumpkin. They come for some sort of value and they come back because of the memories,” Mark said.
There are about a dozen corn mazes in Alberta but they don’t compete with each other. Instead the owners exchange ideas.
“We know there are a lot of corn mazes in Alberta. If they go through ours and have a good time, they are going to go to Lacombe and have a good time,” Deanna said.
About 40 percent of their customers are adults but the goal is to keep the place family oriented with activities for all ages.
“We learned it is not the corn maze that you’re selling, it’s an experience. People come out for the experience and to spend time as a family,” said Mark.
Preparing this type of attraction is weather dependent. The maze usually opens July 30, but Mark and Deanna would like to draw some of the crowd that comes to the area for the Calgary Stampede at the beginning of the month so they are trying to develop new activities that will work earlier in the season.
This summer, the corn was battered with hail in July and excessive rain during their peak time in September, hampered business. Then, an October snowstorm broke some of the corn stalks.
Yet when asked, the couple says they would do it again.
And, while the maze offers an hour-long diversion for visitors, Deanna and Mark are building more agricultural components into the experience to educate city visitors about farm life.
“We get people saying ‘thank you for letting us visit your farm.’ Every year, it gets to be more like the miniature version of the real thing,” said Mark.
