Andelin Family Farm: August 2013

Farm Update Part 3 - The Big Corn Maze

Our biggest addition for 2013 is an almost 3 acre corn maze! We know of only 3 other corn mazes in the Northern Nevada region and they are awesome! So we thought we would try our hand at a big corn maze. We planted a type of corn referred to as field corn. It is grown for the purpose of harvesting for feed for animals or to be used to make corn meal or corn flour. Field corn is great for mazes because the stalks grow very tall (Our tallest is about 9 feet at the writing of this blog post) and the leaves on the stalks are big and full. Here are some pictures of our growing process.

Since we were planting in a new field that used to be pasture we had to spend alot of time prepping the soil with the ripper and disc. Here is Kyle taking a shift with the disc.

Last year we planted the 1 acre of corn with a hand pushed planter that does 1 row at a time. That method wasn't going to fly this year so I bought some International Harvester 185 Planter units from a corn farmer in Parma Idaho and built a 3 point 2 row planter that goes on the tractor. Much easier! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the planter in action.

Kaleb helping with the very first irrigation on the corn field.

Kyle irrigating a couple weeks later

Beginning to cut the maze

The corn getting taller

I'm 6'2" and was excited when it was taller than me.

The swing shift irrigating crew

Sometimes, we do things the hard way. In this case we didn't finish cutting the maze when the corn was short. But that doesn't mean we can't have fun doing it.

What do we do with all the stalks? The cows and goats love them. And we bundle them for decorations.

Farm Update Part 2 - Sweet Corn!

Last year we planted 1 acre of sweet corn that we harvested and we also made a corn maze in it. We called it our "kids corn maze" because the corn wasn't very tall. Many parents told us they liked the maze because they didn't lose their kids in it and they didn't get lost since they could see over the corn. We decided to do the same thing this year. Here are some of our progress pictures:

Plowing the field