We receive lots of emails asking some great questions as well as others letting us know about great resources or products that have worked well. We love your emails so please keep them coming! I thought it might be a good idea to pick out some of the questions we receive along with our responses on topics that may benefit a larger audience and use them as our blog post. We don’t have all the answers by any means but we do our best to share what has worked well for us and others that we have built relationships with. Today, we are going to post Q&A that came from the blog posts Mike wrote on the topic of netting your corn maze. We will always remove the name of the senders and any identifying information to keep things anonymous.
Question:
Hello Jamie,
Thanks for your last couple of articles on maze maintenance. Last year our maze was an absolute disaster and something's got to be done for the upcoming year. We had a "rough" group of kids within the first couple of weeks and the maze was never the same after that. We have a 10-acre maze and the thought of putting netting up all around seems quite overwhelming, but also a good idea. Do you have any pics of what you've done in the past? About how long do you think it would take to do our field?... obviously, it depends on the design and length of paths. Have you heard of any other ideas as well?
Love what you're doing and keep up the good work. Thanks
Our Response:
Our maze in Wisconsin was over 20 acres and we still netted every path. It is a ton of work but the condition of your maze on the last weekend of your season is like night and day compared to one without netting. What we typically would do is have a netting day the Saturday before we open. We round up at least 12 of our employees. This allows for two rolls of netting going at once. With the typical netting unroller (PVC formed into a T), you need 2 people to carry that around unrolling the netting and weaving in and out of the corn. That uses 4 of your 12 employees if you are doing 2 rolls at once. Then we send 4 people in behind each unroller to zip tie the netting to the corn. Usually a zip tie at top and bottom of the netting every 15-20 feet or so.
We get as much done as we can with that crew of 12 in a long 12-hour day. For a 10-acre maze, you may get the majority done. If you are like us, we open early enough that our first weekend or two are not overwhelming when it comes to crowds, so we have taken advantage of those weekends to staff heavier and finish up the netting. Unfortunately, the work doesn’t stop there. It is important to maintain your netting through-out the year, so our “Corn Cops” are not only in the maze helping customers and doing crowd control but they carry zip ties with them to re-attach any netting that rowdy guests have pulled down.
I don’t have any pics of the netting up close that I can think of but I will see what I can find. We will also be doing a How-To video on this sometime in July or August. As far as other ideas, I have seen people use everything from Caution tape to snow fence (after the fact in affected areas). Neither look professional or are a good enough deterrent to withstand the large crowds and the few bad eggs that like to break the rules. I have found nothing else to be as effective as netting.
It comes with a price to be sure. My best guess between cost of netting, zip ties, and labor hours is that you will likely spend $4K - $5K to get it all done on a 10-acre maze.
Hope that helps. We are working on a telescoping netting unroller that will attach to a UTV or lawn tractor that will make things much quicker but will likely not have that done for another couple of months.
Here are a couple suppliers of netting cut down to good size rolls for use in corn mazes:
http://www.industrialnetting.com/applications/agriculture/corn-maze-netting.html
I have always used TamaNet but don’t see the actual rolls on their website. You may need to call since it is a specialized item.
Jamie Stuenzi
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