Brent Polson helped design the maze at Vince Rattai’s farm
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
What’s red and white, but green all over?
The Canada-shaped corn maze on Vince Rattai’s Deer Meadow Farms at 21-155 Springfield Road in Manitoba.
Rattai moved the farm from its original location on Deacon Road.
The 9.1 acre maze includes a cut out of each province and a local element inside each one.
British Columbia includes mountains, for example, Saskatchewan includes wheat and the Parliament buildings sit inside Ontario.
The Rattais hired Brent Polson, a 17-year veteran of cutting and designing corn mazes, to map out the design.
His other designs include an image of Carrie Underwood to mark her performances in Winnipeg in 2016.
Using a handheld GPS, Polson walked the perimeter of the farm over two days to determine how much space he had to work with.
“Once I’ve got (the perimeter) viewed on my computer screen, that’s my digital canvas,” Polson told Farms.com today. “As long as I keep my design within those edges, it should work out.”
To cut the maze, Polson says he and Rattai played a game of cat and mouse.
From the entrance of the maze (waypoint 1), Polson walked to the second waypoint. On his signal and using a zero-turn mower, Rattai cut a straight line to Polson. They repeated the process over two days until the maze was complete.
“This maze has about 1,400 waypoints,” he said, adding the total time from idea conception to completion was about a week.
Aside from the heat inside the maze, the corn’s height also challenged Polson.
“I usually try to cut the corn mazes near the beginning of July when the corn is between my knees and my waist,” he said. “But Vince called me to start the project at the beginning of July. By the time we had everything plotted, the corn was over 10 feet tall.”
And if Polson’s experiences are any indications, visitors should have no problem getting lost in the maze.
“We’d want to break for lunch but wouldn’t know where we were in the maze, so I’d have to revert back to my GPS so we could get out.”
The corn maze is scheduled to open September 2.
Top photo: Deer Meadow Farms/CBC