Cutting Up

This weekend we (being The Husband and Cousin Alvin, I can't officially take credit for this one, see reasons listed below) cut the maze.

They look way too excited to be doing this.

I've been on The Husband about getting this thing cut for a while, but to his credit somethings always kinda come up to prevent him having time to do it.  Finally today we got it lined up with Cousin Alvin and the cutting began.  

Most farms we hear about have someone come cut their maze.  There are these people that just go around the Eastern Seaboard cutting corn mazes.  I guess that would be awesome to have them come and cut out this super complicated maze for us, but it would also cost some money (and then what would I have to blog about?).  Now, I can't claim to know how much since we've never had it done (probably not enough to warrant the hassel of doing it yourself), but whatever it is, it's more than what we want to spend.  We like to keep our overhead lower so we don't have to charge as much.  That means when the labor needs doing, most of the time it's The Husband and I doing it.  Except cutting corn mazes has been put on the list of things I cannot do due to Sea Monkey (no complaint here.  Not having to stand int he middle of a hot humid corn field while the Husband shouts directions to me in the most backwards way imaginable and I attempt to cross the double planted corn tall as my head almost without face planting sounds like an awesome idea to me, plus, when the giant horseflies come around who do they choose to harass?  Me.  Always.  As soon as I hear them I go running and shrieking [see The Confession post] which is not a good idea due to my natural lack of coordination and the sea monkey making my already shaky equilibrium very dicey.  I end up stumbling around either knocking down corn or tripping over six inch long corn stalks cut in a fashion that would have made Vlad the Impaler happy...but I digress) so Cousin Alvin volunteered to help (thanks again!).  Charlie volunteered too Friday.  Bless his heart he was drafted today.

Gator Positioning System

This was before the giant horsefly found me.

These corn maze companies (and most people with sense) use GPS to map out the field and where the pathways should go.  Well, we don't do it that way (not sure what that says about us, that we lack sense or are glutton for punishment?).  We used an image copied onto graphing paper, two long pieces of pvc pipe with the tip painted orange, a super long tape measure thing on a wheel the size of a dinner plate (I'm sure it has a name, but it is escaping me at the moment), a white rope tied to the Gator (I was told we did have GPS, the Gator Positioning System) on one side of the field and the water truck on the other, and two fellows with machetes (real high tech I know).  Now in the past we've used bush hogs and bush axes.  Honestly I'm not really sure why machetes were the weapons of choice this year unless they're practicing for the Haunted Maze.  Nevertheless, when you're walking through this year, think about the fact that it was cut using machetes.

I came back 45 min later to bring drinks and
the giant horsefly found me again.  Of course.

Anyway I guess in the end it doesn't matter.  It's cut and it's a lot more complicated so get ready to get thoroughly lost this year (even they got lost and had to refer to the map to get out, but I guess that could have been operator error).  No ten or twenty minute run-through this year.  When we started planning this thing I told The Husband I wanted it to take at least twice as long and I think we might have done it.  Of course, I say that and some eight year old is going to barrel off the hayride and make it out in fifteen flat.  But hey, effort's worth something right?