“It’s a good time of year to get outside,” said Doug Joyer. “We gotta take it in because it’s gonna get cold.”
Joyer is especially joyous because of this season’s corn maze. In the Midwest, corn mazes are an autumn staple and this one is definitely unique because it shows off his passion for the U of M.
“Our family has a long legacy with the University of Minnesota,” Joyer said.
Several members of the Joyer family – spanning multiple generations – went to the U of M. They are paying tribute to their favorite school with a unique theme that includes a tribute to the university’s recognizable Goldy Gopher mascot.
“We are excited to partner with the University of Minnesota athletic department and have Goldy be represented in the corn maze,” Joyer said. “All the three brothers that work at the farm full-time graduated from the U. My brother Andrew and I got a horticulture degree. My brother Joe got an agricultural-education degree. My dad got a degree there, a marketing degree and two of my older siblings also graduated from the U.”
Two-phase maze
The Joyers have operated the farm since the early 1980s. The Adventure Farm is part of their agritourism business and the emphasis is heavy on fun and people usually leave happy.
Said Joyer: “I’m really excited about the maze this year.”
The corn maze has two phases – one is simple and the other is more challenging.
“We like to have a short maze, so if you’ve got little ones in the family they don’t have to walk the whole maze,” Joyer said. “That one takes about 10 minutes. If you want to go longer the second phase takes about 45 minutes to an hour.”
Carving Goldy into this field of dreams wasn’t easy.
“To have a likeness of Goldy it takes precision to lay it out,” Joyer said. “We plant the corn maze in a grid system from north-south, east-west. We count rows to make the arches and connect the dots. Then we mark it off with spray paint and we take it on from there so we make sure we got it right, check it out, mow it a couple times. This year with all the rain we had the corn is really tall.”
The corn maze is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm and closes on October 31st.
