Alongside Homecoming festivities and Ag Days, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences also opened the third annual Clearwater Corn Maze.
Jesse Hart | Argonaut
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Ag Days guests make their way through the Clearwater Corn Maze Saturday night at the Lewiston Roundup Grounds. The corn maze is organized by CALS students to help fund the college.
The University of Idaho College of Agriculture and Life Sciences hosted Ag Days, bringing in alumni and prospective students and the opening of the Third Annual Clearwater Corn Maze.
Jaimi Small, a senior from Eagle High School, said she really enjoyed Ag Days, and seeing the college campus. She is getting ready to apply to colleges, and said being able to see the campus and go to various activities made her fall in love with UI.
“Coming to Ag Days counts as a college visit for students,” said Ann Boyd, an adviser for Family, Career and Community Leaders of America at Eagle High School.
She said it was a great opportunity for students to learn about the college experience.
In addition to the corn maze, students went on a campus tour, spent time at the rec center, ate at a barbecue and participated in various competitions.
“It was really fun,” Small said.
The corn maze is the brainchild of Dr. John Foltz, associate dean and director of Academic Programs in the CALS department, but he hopes students will take over.
This year, the corn is eleven feet tall, and the maze is
designed to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of 4-H in Idaho, he said.
There is the 4-H four leaf clover, with the number 100, as the center of the maze, but the design also gives credit to the three missions of 4-H — science, citizenship and healthy living — which are represented by the steer, state house and bicycle, Foltz said.
“It was very fun and time consuming,” Tagaris Jones said. “There were a lot of difficult dead ends we had to face.”
Foltz said they are offering some new attractions as well as the smaller straw bale maze geared toward children
“We have a pumpkin canon this year which will be shot off every hour on the hour,” he said.
He hopes that eventually they can offer a Pumpkin Chunkin’ contest, which is a contest with various machines designed to shoot pumpkins at different lengths.
They will also have a cow train — barrels painted as cows pulled by a tractor — for children to ride around in, and on Saturday afternoons there will be antique tractors for people to look at.
Foltz said the corn maze is a great way to have students learn by doing.
He said the maze is the ultimate experience for students to have fun while still putting in a lot of work and learning what it takes to run a business. Students on various committees oversee different aspects of the maze.
Also, different student clubs have the opportunity to make money by volunteering their time to help with parking, policing the maze or taking tickets, he said.
“Here is a fun venue to get people together and working, and for students to meet faculty and staff — to make connections,” Foltz said.
He said the corn maze is in Lewiston for multiple reasons, the main one being that The Lewiston Roundup are great partners — they provide the land, water and infrastructure required to run the maze, and take a percentage of the profits.
Lewiston is also typically ten degrees warmer than Moscow, which makes it better to grow corn. And they have more water capability.
Foltz said the corn maze is a success because of the Kaufman family, who do all of the farming and get the corn ready for the maze in October. They are given half of the profit of the maze, while the other half goes to the Agriculture Student Affairs Council, which will split the money between the clubs that volunteered.
The corn maze is open every Friday and Halloween from 6-10 p.m., Saturday’s 12-10 p.m. and Sundays 12-5p.m.
Allison Griffith can be reached at arg-news.uidaho.edu