Get Lost!

Every fall, thousands of people flock to a farm in Lodi, Wisconsin, to get lost in a work of art made of corn! Since 2001, Treinen Farm has carefully designed, planted, cut, and grown elaborate corn mazes.

Each one has a different theme, like unicorns, kittens, or dancing cranes. They all come from the mind of owner Angie Treinen. “I start with abstract ideas that I turn into a physical picture,” she says. Next, she designs the maze on computer software and adds a grid. The grid must be the correct scale, so that her design can be accurately cut into the corn field.

Every fall, thousands of people visit a farm in Lodi, Wisconsin. They want to get lost in a work of art made of corn! Since 2001, workers at Treinen Farm have built elaborate corn mazes. They carefully design, plant, cut, and grow the mazes every year.

Each maze has a theme, like unicorns or kittens. Farm owner Angie Treinen is the one who thinks them up. She starts with an idea, then makes a drawing, and then a digital image. She adds a grid over the image to help the team scale it up accurately.

In the spring, workers plant the corn in a grid, which helps when it comes time to cut the maze. The grid is visible for only a few weeks, when the plants are small, so they have to work fast!

Using Treinen’s illustration, the cutting team marks the design on the ground with paint or stakes. Since the maze is cut in the summer, many of the people working on it are teenagers.

Once the cutting team is certain the design is right, the maze’s pathways are tilled over. This removes the corn and creates a dirt trail. There’s no fixing mistakes after tilling and no way to check that the design is perfect until the corn grows and creates the walls of the maze! All Treinen can do is wait. “When they’ve cut it all and there’s a dinosaur in the field it’s amazing,” she says.

In the spring, workers plant the corn in a grid shape. That way they can match each square on the ground to a square in Treinen’s drawing. The grid is visible for only a few weeks, before the plants grow big and bushy. That means the cutting team has to move fast!

Many of the maze cutters are teenagers with summer jobs at the farm. They look at Treinen’s illustration, then mark the design on the ground with paint or stakes. Once they’re sure it’s right, they use a tiller to clear the maze’s pathways. This machine removes the corn plants and creates a dirt trail.

The remaining corn keeps growing and eventually forms the maze walls. Once the tilling process is done, there’s no fixing mistakes! All Treinen can do is wait and see how the corn grows in. “When they’ve cut it all, and there’s a dinosaur in the field, it’s amazing,” she says.