Oh, the possibilities
Apples, donuts, cider or the famous corn maze —Wojcik’s Farm has your fall fun
BLACKSTONE — Even though the weather hasn’t been exactly autumnal, it’s looking a lot like fall at Wojcik’s Farm on Milk Street where the farm’s popular corn maze has been packing in people looking to get lost.
Over the past 12 years, the Wojcik’s Farm corn maze has been a destination for Blackstone Valley residents looking to enjoy the fall season.
At Wojcik’s Farm you can also relax and stroll over to the farm’s snack shop or farm stand and bakery where you will find everything from apples to cider to fried dough to the farm’s famous cider donuts. And if you don’t mind doing the work yourself, you can head out to the orchard and pumpkin patch and pick your own apples and pumpkins
“Our motto is come spend a day in the countryside,” said Vicki Wojcik, daughter of farm owner Chip Wojcik. “We make an effort to keep costs low so that coming to the farm is an affordable experience for families of all incomes. For example, we do not have a parking fee and haven’t changed the price of the corn maze in the 12 years that we’ve been doing it. You only pay for the activities that you want to participate in.”
The farm’s big attraction every year is the corn maze. From a distance, the 5.5 acres of cow corn at Wojcik’s Farm on Milk Street looks like any other small-farm corn field. But step inside the thick jungle of stalks and you’ll find an intricate
labyrinth of paths, where on a sunny fall day you’re likely to find hundreds of people scratching their heads as they navigate their way through what some local enthusiasts say just might be the best corn maze in the Blackstone Valley.
The maze opened Labor Day weekend, and between now and the end of October the farm will be visited by thousands of people.
But the Wojciks haven’t created just any old corn maze. This farm’s maze is a walk-through maze complete with paths, loops, and dead ends, and a theme and design that changes every year. To begin with, visitors can enjoy a wagon ride that brings them right to the entrance.
According to Wojcik, the point of the maze isn’t just to get out of it, but to find three checkpoints randomly placed within the maze. These checkpoints are mailboxes, each one containing a hole-puncher. When visitors find each mailbox, they punch a hole into one of the boxes on the ticket they received at the point of purchase. After finding all three checkpoints, visitors must then find their way to the exit. Once out of the maze, they place their ticket into the “ticket box,” where they are entered into a raffle with cash prizes.
Visitors are also given an empty crossword puzzle and must find clues within the maze to complete the puzzle.
“We ask people to take their time, enjoy the country setting, and make their venture worth the while,” she says.
The maze has been a big hit since Chip Wojcik began the first one 12 years ago. Today, the farm’s Facebook corn maze page has 4,525 likes and people turn out in droves, especially on the busy weekends leading up to Halloween.
If you’ve ever wondered how a corn maze is designed and made, then you have to talk to Don Watts, a Pennsylvania-based corn maze designer who comes all the way to Blackstone every year to design and cut Wojcik’s maze.
Known as The Corn Maze Guy, Watts has designed mazes from Maine to Florida and as far west as Iowa.
Watts started in farming in 1975 at Shady Brook Farm in Yardley, Penn. In 1986, he left farming to start a graphic design business. In 1989, the farm contacted him to design a corn maze, the beginning of his business Newtown Graphics Corn Maze Designs. Shady Brook Farm’s “PumpkinFest” is now one of the most popular corn maze events on the east coast.
The bottom line – Watts is the guy farmers seek out when they want to start up a corn maze. Wojcik’s been working with him since 2006.
At Wojcik’s farm, Chip Wojcik and his hired hands plant a full five-acre field of corn every year just for the maze. Wojcik then calls Watts and they discuss possible themes and designs. This year’s theme is “Monster Truck,” and if you were to view the maze from a few hundred feet above the ground you’d be able to make out a big-tire monster truck and the letters U.S.A.
Once the corn has grown and is standing tall, Watts arrives at the farm with a computer-generated design he came up with based on a land plot grid of Wojick’s plot. He then attaches a GPS to a zeroturn lawnmower, follows the coordinates on the GPS, and within a few hours the maze has been cut out with three- to four-foot-wide paths.
The day after the last day of the corn maze season – usually the last Sunday in October – the stalks are cut down and the corn is fed to the cows.
Depending on your navigational skills, walking through the maze should take on average between a half-hour to an hour-and-a-half. If it takes longer than that, then you’re probably lost.
“We’ve had a few people call the main office from the cell phone to say they were lost,” Wojcik smiles.
While they may not have singlehandedly saved the small family farm, corn mazes and other attractions have helped many farmers make ends meet and sometimes bring in more money than the vegetables and fruits they grow. Throughout the summer, for example, Wokick’s Farm hosts family-friendly events such as Summer Cruise Nights on select Friday nights. A new event at the farm this year is Mud Jam, where fourwheel trucks and jeeps can race through a mud obstacle course. The first Mud Jam was held in May, and another is scheduled to be held Nov. 4
Wojcik’s farm on Mendon Street is about 300 years old, but it’s been in Chip Wojcik’s family since the early 1950s, when his father, Joseph, bought the land – known for years as Webster Farm – to raise pork and grow vegetables. The farm is next to another farm specializing in all-natural beef and pork, which is run on an adjacent parcel by his Chip’s brother, Joe Wojcik.
Today, the corn maze is one of the busiest in the Valley.
“We enjoy it and the visitors to the farm enjoy it,” says Vicki.