CLICK PIC BELOW: See us LIVE cutting the corn maze for 2017’s Arabian Nights Adventure at Maize Quest Corn Maze & Fun Park.
Open through Nov 5, 2017
The “Maker Movement”. Are you a maker? The maker movement was a clever rebellion against all work become service or computer oriented. It was a movement restarted by artists to regain the fundamental need of humans to see the completed product of their work.
It can be de-humanizing to work all day at a computer (Yes, I know about it because we work hard in the office all winter!), then not seeing anything by a screen of returned emails for all that effort.
In agriculture, we’ve always been makers. We make the most important products: FOOD. Furthermore, we plow fields, plant seeds, harvest corn – we see the tangible results of what we do.
As maze-makers and entertainers, we see the value of what we do all day!If you’ve visited, you might have noticed me hiking through the park or maze, meeting and greeting, checking in on our guests, joking with kiddos.
Your smiles, your pictures, your memories are very tangible results for all the work we did ‘making’ the annual adventure. It’s likely that part of the enjoyment you get is that we are a real family, on a real farm, growing real pumpkins on real vines, you are picking real apples from the tree that really grew them.
That connection, that authenticity, is something no screen can provide.Kids need authentic experiences to reconnect them to the real world. If yours are like mine, they spend a lot of time on screens. It’s not all bad, they can connect over distances, but I’m just old-school, I suppose. I believe that real, authentic, hands-on experiences beat virtual ones, hands-down.
I was walking with a school group as they were preparing to leave. The middle-school-aged boy had been bouncing on the jump pads and had his shoes off, had dirt on his shirt, colored streaks on his face (typical decoration after completing the Bamboo Maze game), and his hair was a mess.
“What are you doing?” his mother exclaimed as he promptly plopped down on the gravel to get his shoes on.
“Putting my shoes on mom!”, he said with a mischievous smile at his mom.
The kid got it. He had an absolutely great time bouncing himself silly, playing with his friends, exploring, climbing, sliding and YES! Getting dirty.
Oh, he was a maker, and he had made quite a day of it on the farm. Only two weeks remain for you to enjoy all that we’ve made for you at the farm. Why not bring your makers to the farm and see what they’ll ‘make’ of it?
See you soon,
Farmer Hugh