My Food Chain Gang

One thing I forgot to touch on in my previous post is the danger of corn mazes.  Maybe I’m just a paranoid person - well, that I already know - but I was wondering how come there’s never been a major disaster at a corn maze?  I mean, what if the thing goes up in flames?  It’s a concern I was able to stash in the back of my mind during our visit Friday night; mostly because the particular maze we visited seemed safe.  They have a watch tower in the middle of it along with various emergency exits and “corn cops” to help guide you out should an emergency occur.  But the first corn maze we visited a few years ago had none of these precautions, and I couldn’t help but let my mind wander, exploring various disasterous scenarios in my head.  “Maybe they’re not very flammable.” my husband said about corn mazes, but that theory was dispelled the other night when we saw all the signs warning about how flammable the corn maze was.  Well, anyway, nothing horrible happened, thank goodness, and I’ve never heard of disaster befalling a corn maze, so until something happens, we’ll be able to enjoy the pastime of corn mazing for years to come.

So onto the rest of the weekend…  Saturday was the day of our town’s Fall Fest, so we walked the kids up to the town square, enjoyed the ambience and picnicked for lunch.  We ran into a few friends, and came home with an extra kid who spent the afternoon with us when we visited a local alpaca farm.  Here are the kids enjoying the bouncy castle at the fall fest with their friend.

Before the alpaca farm, we visited another local farm where they have an annual Halloween display - it’s really neat.  They go all out for Halloween, and they even made a little train for the kids to ride that’s pulled by a tractor.  Every family that visits gets little Halloween toys, home-grown apples, and a plate of cookies to take home - and it’s all free; done by nice people who just want to share Halloween with their visitors.  Last year we asked about donating money so they can continue their yearly traditions, but they said their insurance company said they can’t except cash but baking supplies and Halloween props would be appreciated.  My parents visited with us last year and enjoyed the Halloween farm so much that they gave me some baking supplies to donate, so Saturday while we were out that way in the country, we dropped them off.  Of course, they wouldn’t let us drop stuff off without taking home a plate of homemade cookies…  these are the nicest people.  Their home is sparsely furnished - yes, they invite everyone in for a visit - which leads one to think that if they have extra money, it’s spent on baking supplies and Halloween stuff.  Also, the woman is in a wheelchair, but none of that stops them from putting up this elaborate Halloween display every year and baking hundreds of cookies to give away.  When we went to their place for the first time a few years ago, we had just moved here from Chicago, and I’m embarrassed to admit that we were confused.  In the suburban Chicago area, there just aren’t many nice people doing things soley for the enjoyment of others, especially at their own expense.  People like that are few and far between and in an area that’s so over-populated, you’re lucky if you run into anyone like that.

Wow, I find myself having to recover from yet another tangent!  So anyway, after the Fall Fest downtown we went to the alpaca farm.  Saturday was National Alpaca Farm Day, meaning that any alpaca farm who wanted to participate had an open house on their farm for people to visit and learn about these animals.  Not only are they cute, but they are profitable as well.  Their fur sells for $12/oz, and one alpaca can yield 140 - 160 oz per year!  And it’s a method of farming that I approve of since it doesn’t injure nor kill the animal.  This farm had a 3-week-old baby alpaca (top picture below), and another one due any day, which is also fascinating because the expecting alpaca didn’t even look pregnant.  The farm also had a wild mustang that they had just rescued from Wyoming (bottom picture below).  Apparently the wild mustangs out there are running out of pasture and food, so people are bringing them to farms so they don’t starve.  This gorgeous animal had never touched a human being until a few weeks ago, and his first contact with humans was them putting him into a trailer and driving him across the country - that must have been frightening for him.  But you couldn’t tell by looking at him.  He was so well-adjusted and was coming up to all the people who were visiting.  They said he had gained lots of weight since he had arrived on the farm also, so that’s great.

There is just something about being on a farm that makes me feel peaceful.  The rolling countryside is beautiful, and I don’t even mind the stench of farm animals.  I would love to have a farm some day, providing we had enough money to pay a staff to maintain it.  They are lots of work I know, and I don’t know the first thing about running a farm.  But someday I think I’d like to try, and if that’s a route we explore in the future, alpacas will definitely be part of the venture!

I had a wonderful weekend.  It all started with another visit to a haunted house on Friday night.  Although I enjoyed my previous haunted house experience at Ghostly Manor earlier this year, I just wasn’t feeling the Halloween vibe enough to subject myself to scariness - I didn’t sleep well the night before and little sleep makes me feel claustrophobic - weird.  But anyway, the haunted house was actually a haunted corn maze and they had other things to do at the farm, so I enjoyed myself immensely hanging out with my kids and the coolest teenager I know.  There is just something about farms that make me feel an inner peace; something that was illustrated again during the weekend - more on that in my next post.

Literally a cornfield in the middle of nowhere, Leader’s Family Farms has things to do to keep all ages entertained.  There were even a few things we didn’t even get a chance to try after spending so much time being lost in the corn maze.  Next time I will have to check out the hayride and the coop shoot - I have a special affinity for hayrides because they remind me of the week-long vacations to a dude ranch I took with my family as a kid.  But one thing about Leader’s that really impressed me was their ability to make appealing and fun attractions without the large budget or the mechanical reliance that a major theme park would have.  The “Barnyard” or family area had several things for the kids to play with: bouncy castles, a zip line, haystacks to climb on, a hay maze, slides - all physical activities which would guarrantee kids’ exhaustion giving the parents some “mommy-daddy time” at the end of the evening - the problem is everything was physical for Mommy and Daddy too, and like the DJ noted, “I don’t know who is getting tired out more - the parents or the kids!”  But that illustrates my point about the ability to entertain every age group without spending big bucks - and that is true for both the patron and the establishment.  Actually, let me back up for a minute and go off on a tangent - the purpose of the site, right?  :)  Why do they call it a hayride when you’re actually sitting on straw?  I learned from a display at the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo that hay is green and made from grass.  Straw is yellow and made from wheat.  So the kids were climbing on straw stacks, they played in a straw maze, and people were enjoying straw rides…  doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as hayrides, I guess…

But back to Leader’s - they had a DJ, who hosted Karaoke and played wedding-style audience-interactive songs like Hokey-Pokey, The Chicken Dance, YMCA, and Shout.  I was trying to teach Disney (my almost 2 year old) the YMCA, but she only liked the part where we clapped.  Maybe next time we will get down on the dance floor - this time my other girls were too shy and tired was I.  My insanely brave (or psychotic, depending upon who you ask) 4-year-old Sammie was intent on going into the haunted house, and my husband was actually going to take her in, but before she could even enter, she was frightened away from the experience by the scary music alone.  We got a cell phone call just as we were entering the corn maze, and so we retreived Sammie and let her enjoy the experience of the corn maze, which ended up being what I would describe as a twisted game of Survivor.  Take 4 kids, all under the age of 9, into a corn maze and wander around in the dark for over an hour.  No bathrooms, no snacks, and you only have enough stroller for two of them, so the other two have to walk.  It was fun, but also quite an experience.  I would love to go back and explore the maze - without kids though.  And when I got home, I looked at an aerial photo of the thing, and now it all makes more sense.  Here is where I spent my Friday night:

You enter at the small white building at the bottom of the picture and go left.  Where we really started losing it was around the back tire and the spoiler of the race car.  You can see how many forks and circles there are in the paths in that area.  And again, while in the thing, I had no idea what it looked like because I didn’t think to check a map before going in.  I would also bring a flashlight next time; well, maybe not if I didn’t have kids to worry about.  We were using our cell phones for light, but then the other half of our group who went into the haunted house called to see where we were and when I said I didn’t know, the cell phone lost service - adding to the stranded feeling we were experiencing.  I must have stashed my cell phone on top of the stroller really quick because my daughter had turned backwards in her seat and was falling out, so after I fixed her, I frantically searched for the cell phone with no luck - apparently it had fallen off the stroller in the corn maze.  So when we finally got out, I had to tell the staff that I lost my cell phone in there.  As they laughed at me, they asked if it was on vibrate or silence mode - “Of course it is!”  I said, because it would have been too easy to find it otherwise, and let’s face it - a lost cell phone in a corn maze wouldn’t be funny if you could call it and hear it ring.  So a small black silent cell phone lost in a corn maze in the dark?  Forget it.  They did call me the next day though, saying that they did eventually find it, probably with the light of day.  Well, anyway, the corn maze with 4 little children in the dark was quite an experience.  Not horrible, but not recommended…  quite an experience - I can only describe it as having felt like I came through an ordeal after we got out…  it was kind of like being stranded in the wilderness, not knowing when rescue would arrive.  Sure, there are “corn cops” and all you have to do is yell, but I don’t know how they’d hear you and I honestly didn’t want to be the group that yelled for help.  We did it on our own, and for that, we got the satisfaction of accomplishment.

Well, I’ve rambled about that long enough…  I had fun.  I loved the serenity of the farm at night, and it was a beautiful night weather-wise.  It was cool but not cold, and being in rural Ohio meant that we were navigating the maze under a canopy of thousands of stars…  I would love to go back and explore the maze without worrying about the kids being hungry, thirsty, having sore feet or having to go to the bathroom.  And someone remind me that if I have any more kids, a corn maze is NOT a good activity for a pregnant woman - too much walking and not enough bathrooms.  This post is so lengthy I’ll have to save our alpaca farm adventure for the next post…  stay tuned!