Davey manages the perennial section at the Summerside (Prince Edward Island) farm, but a lot of his year is spent thinking about designing and constructing this maze.
He drew up the initial plan in early April, settled on the design, then set to work at creating the labyrinth that locals and visitors have enjoyed trying to find their way around, and out of, for the past three years.
Davey, who has a background in both design and horticulture, actually had an artistic inspiration for this year's edition of the maze.
"I have a certain fondness for a Spanish artist named Jon Miro ... who did a lot of interesting abstract work. If you look at the overhead (picture) of the maze, it does actually look like a Jon Miro-themed painting. That was the inspiration for it," he said.
"The first year it was a little more challenging, and it became more difficult as you went on from room to room. It was OK, but some people, especially little children, found it too challenging. It's kind of a trial and error thing."
Wait a minute, this is supposed to be less challenging than a couple of years ago?
Once the straightaway portion at the beginning of the maze began to diverge into various other paths, Davey told me I had to wing it.
My decision to go with a repeated "turn-right-turn-left" strategy proved to be largely unsuccessful, and I led Davey around in circles, often arriving at the same open space, or room, twice.
"The aim is actually to get out," he laughed when I asked him if there was a specific end point I should shoot for.
Once the elaborate design of the maze was finalized, creating the maze was fairly simple when the corn stalks were only around six inches high. Now, they're around eight feet tall.
"All I did was held apart my arms and walked through, and one of the guys came behind me with a lawnmower. We just cut down the corn, and that's all we've done - kept maintaining the corn," Davey explained.
"I think there's a fascination with walking through any structure that... you can't see over. It's like pretending you're an ant in the grass.
"And I hope it's fun for kids. They get a kick out of running up and down as hard as they can go in here."
(Stephen Brun is a TC Media reporter based in Summerside.)
The Guardian
