Farmers Celebrate Peanuts with Special Corn Mazes
Visitors to corn mazes across North America are finding a familiar figure in the stalks: Snoopy, the dog from the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz.
More than 80 farms in the US and Canada have teamed up with Peanuts Worldwide to create Peanuts-themed mazes to celebrate the comic strip's 75th birthday next year.
The mazes — which are found in 35 states and provinces, from California to New York, Ontario to Texas — are expected to attract more than 2 million visitors.
Each maze is designed for the size of the farm and most are made from corn, although others are made from sunflowers.
They're custom created by the world's largest corn maze company, called The Maize.
Brett Herbst, who leads the company and who launched his first corn maze in 1996, explained that the designs are done on a computer but most of the time they're then drawn by hand on the ground.
Over the years, he and his team have designed mazes with everything from the faces of presidents to zombies and celebrities.
Herbst said there's an art and a science to maze building: a balance between making it look like a person or character, but also making it a true maze that people can actually get lost in.
Peanuts was first published in October 1950. It tells the story of a child named Charlie Brown and his friends.
It appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers and reached millions of readers in 75 countries. Schulz, its creator, died in 2000 but his daughter Jill Schulz said things like this keep his legacy alive.
She said the mazes are a good way for parents and grandparents to introduce their children to something they loved when they were young.
She added: "I think we all need a little innocence for our children right now with all the technology out there."
