Jeepers Creepers

I don't like to be scared.  I've never liked horror movies, although I did used to read ghost stories.  I was a little obsessed with aliens there for a bit.  But seriously, Unsolved Mysteries would keep me up at night (yes, I just admitted it).  So needless to say I never went to haunted houses, trails, mazes, insert correct noun here.  Never.  Until I started running one.


Last year, we had no idea if it would take off or even be something people would come and do.  So we went out there with our shoestring staff and family and tried to rock it best we could (after night one I was relegated to The Stand.  I would run out at people and scream and halfway through I'd burst into laughter.  I just can't commit to purposefully looking like a complete idiot.  On a regular day I do it all the time but that doesn't count apparently).  I think we did a good job with what we had to work with.  People went away scared and they had fun so I think it was a success.  


Now, this year, we knew we wanted to expand.  We put up more elaborate props (I heart fog), played around with sound (last night I heard a deer in the woods blowing and snorting and I almost came unhinged, we have to get that somewhere in there), got some more players (the crazy guys from SJAFB, the creepy girls from CBA, and some of our family + staff including Red Robin who's scared me to death at least three times, even after I reminded him that I signed his check and cut off Dr. Peppers) tried to organize a little better (huge thanks to Cousin Alvin, without whom this haunted maze would have never existed).  The result is pretty good I think.  It's creepy and scary and a lot of fun.  This is my favorite thing that we do here at the maze because it is just as much fun to scare you as it is for you to be scared.  So come check us out.  We'll be open all next weekend, including Halloween night starting at 7 pm.

The Players

Punkin' Chunkin'!

Over the past winter The Husband and I were having one of our usual nightly arguments about what to watch on TV, (see, he likes to be constantly changing the channel and it drives me insane, because just as soon as I get into something he turns it.  He also likes to watch bad reality TV, you know those shows where they argue, gripe, and complain more than anything, which drives me insane.  Nine times out of ten I give up, hand him the remote, and pick up a book or a computer.) when he decided to watch the pumpkin chunking tournament on TV.  It was in the middle of this show the light bulb went on.  What if we did punkin' chunkin' at the corn maze?

Every year we want to kinda do some different things, add things, improve things, keep it interesting.  What is more interesting that hurtling a pumpkin through a field at 75 miles an hour in the hopes of watching it smash into pumpkin goo against a target?  That would be totally awesome.  No one else around was doing it.  It seemed like a no-brainer to me.  (Plus, and I don't know what this says about me, but hearing the sound of pumpkins smashing against the targets is akin to popping those sheets of air bubbles used in shipping on the soul satisfying level).

So all spring and summer I nagged The Husband about this (because apparently to him it was not a no-brainer) because I was determined we would be doing punkin' chunkin' at the farm this fall.  Persistence paid off (I WON!).  The last weekend of September he built the chunker (essentially a slingshot on a frame) and last weekend we had our first guinea pigs, a birthday party of twenty nine-year old girls (yikes!).  This weekend Cousin Alvin brought targets which is great because before they had to be cracked or in a state of decay to bust on the soft ground.  Now they whack against the target and bust which always results in cheers and claps.  

Yes, The Husband did build this all on his own

I'm really wanting to have a tournament Nov. 5, where everyone can come help us get rid of the old pumpkins and see who is the mightiest chunker out there.  Eventually I'd love to have a sort of tournament where maybe people brought machines, catapults and trebuchets and all (nothing as big as what they do in Maryland, but maybe a smaller scaled Goldsboro version).  It's funny to me (I'm sure no one else cares) that these machines that people used to hurtle rotting corpses over town walls in the middle ages to infect the townspeople with diseases during sieges are now being used to hurtle pumpkins across fields for mindless entertainment.  Welcome to the twenty-first century!

P.S. It is totally awesome!  Check out our you-tube channel for video:

http://www.youtube.com/user/odomfarmingcoinc

Oh yeah and P.S.S.  For those of you who saw the sign I painted, I can in fact correctly spell chunkin'...but chunin' got you lookin', didn't it?