As you explore the corn maze at the Swank Farms Experience this year, you probably won’t notice from ground level that part of the path forms a heart with the words “Bonnie 21” carved into the planting. Or that another part spells out ‘4 Mom.”
They are there as a tribute from Joey Kistler to his mother, Bonnie Swank, who had designed and created all of the mazes from 2000 until her death in January.
“This year it is all about my mom, that we miss her and we love her,” Kistler said. “She left some pretty big shoes to fill and I decided who better to step in than me? I think I have some of her design skills, and it turned out to be fun to do.”
Bonnie designed the first corn maze the year she met Dick Swank. She had told him she had experience with design, so he delegated the job to her on their very first date.
“When I met Bonnie, I told her I was making a corn maze and that she was going to draw it for me,” Dick said. “After a few weeks, she said, ‘I guess you want me to design your maze now,’ and that was it. She designed them every year after that.”
Bonnie’s first design was based on children’s puzzle books and was complex and tightly geometrical. But the Swanks discovered translating a design on paper to the field was a complicated matter.
“We learned so much after the first year,” Dick said. “We thought we had a rectangle and we were cutting the corn by eye. Your eye wants to follow the corn line, but the corn line isn’t straight. So we learned the first thing you do when you plant is square the field.”
When Kistler first started to design the maze, he began to realize that Bonnie had made the process look simple.
“It is all graphed, so it is simple math,” said Kistler. “Being my first time, it was a lot more work than I thought it would be. You grid it out, which I learned from Dick and my son Bradley. He walked the maze with my mom and my other son, Cameron, for five years and he gave me some tips. I did make some mistakes, and I wish I had come out some time and watched my mom do it. She could knock it out in three hours and it took me three days.”
As a concession made because of COVID restrictions, the design this year, like the design Bonnie did in 2020, is more a series of pathways rather than a formal maze, to keep people from crossing each other too frequently.
Kistler kept two of the features from that maze: a strolling pathway for casual walkers who just want to walk inside the cornfield, and a wide running pathway where kids can let off some energy. Those paths are designed as one way in and one way out to make sure everyone is socially distanced.
Creating the maze begins with the basics of simple farming: rotating crops beforehand to ensure good soil for growing. The maze is made of basic field corn and is planted at the end of June or early July. After it starts to grow, things become more complicated.
“We plant north and south, east and west, and that is our grid,” Dick said. “We lay it out into squares to match the graph paper used for the design. When the corn is about eight inches tall, we go through with a rototiller behind a tractor to cut the design out.”
It was Kistler’s job to mark out the maze for the final cut.
“I was walking it and marking it based on the grid,” Kistler said. “Dick said to just spray one side of the path and the tractor wheels would follow that. I was walking the maze and marking it with the tractor following right behind me cutting it out.”
While the tractor did most of the work, Dick cut out the lettering for “Bonnie” and “4 Mom” by hand to make it more accurate.
“The maze is our tribute to Bonnie,” Dick said. “We still think about her every day and it will be something we do forever in her memory.”
The maze is now open Fridays through Sundays until Oct. 31. The Trail of Lights and Spookley Trail opens Oct. 1. The Fall Experience event also includes three acres planted with over 20 different varieties of sunflowers you can cut and take home. Tickets are available on the Swank Farms website.
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