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Members of the Park Rapids FFA have been pitching in at Pike’s Corn Maze this month, raising funds for a trip to the national FFA convention in Indianapolis.
Six members of the school club will be departing Oct. 23 for national competition, a leadership event and a bit of sightseeing.
“We’ve got six kids out today for the morning,” said club co-adviser Ashley Anderson.
While husband Jay Pike was hauling sightseers on a hayride amid blazing fall colors, Marlene Pike minded the shop on Oct. 15 where FFA members were scrubbing pumpkins, tying up decorative bundles of corn stalks and rubbing the kernels off corn cobs to feed to the petting-zoo animals, including sheep, goats and pigs.
Located off County 6 at Prairie Pine Farm, Pike’s Corn Maze is open weekends through October.
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“We have a few new animals here this year,” said Marlene. “We have two donkeys and a baby donkey, and the miniature horse is now. And there is a cow out there also.”
New this year was a sheltered corn pit with toys and hay bales for children to play in. The farm also features a tic-tac-toe game using orange and white pumpkins, a scavenger hunt, a kiddie maze made of rectangular hay bales and a bigger, round-bale castle for kids to play on.
And of course, there’s the actual corn maze, which Marlene says is a 20- to 40-minute walk depending on one’s skills.
“We did grow pumpkins on-site,” said Marlene, noting that in some years, they’ve grown them at their son’s house on Hubbard prairie. “Until yesterday, you could go out there and pick your own pumpkin if you wanted to. Not too many people asked to do that.”
However, she said, they had to clear up the pumpkin patch due to a turn in the weather.
During one portion of Saturday morning, visitors to the corn maze included families from Blackduck, Bemidji, Moorhead and as far away as Bellevue, Nebraska.
