October means football, piles of leaves, Halloween on Franklin Street-and for the McKee family of Rougemont, October means cornfields and Maple View Ice Cream.
Every fall, the McKees transform their Orange County cornfield into a 12-acre maze, plus a two-acre children's maze. Both are open to the public weekends during the fall season. This year, the maze, which is based on the theme "Art In The Field," reproduces the painting "Dixie Dawn" by North Carolina artist Kenny Glenn.
In addition, for four nights at the end of the month, the maze becomes haunted and visitors can partake in a spooky, festive Halloween excursion.
On a brisk fall afternoon, guests wander through the maze in search of eight check-points, a unique hole punch located at each one. The goal is to collect all eight punches on the admission ticket. If and when explorers get tired and need a rest, refreshments and Carrboro-produced Maple View Ice Cream are available for purchase, as are pumpkins in several sizes and colors. A petting zoo and playground provide additional post-maze entertainment.
Since 2000, the McKees have created a different themed maze each year, each one creating a picture from a bird's-eye view.
"There was actually a farmer in Canada who had started a cornfield maze so I had read about that years ago," said Vickie McKee, who is also a nurse clinician at Duke University Medical Center. "We were looking for ways to diversify our farming operation [in 2000], so I said we really need to think about doing a cornfield."
In addition to its entertainment and livestock-feeding purposes, the McKee corn also performs a civic duty.
"We really try to promote tourism for Orange County," she said. "A lot of people come through Hillsborough-which is a wonderful historical town-and so it's nice for people from other areas to see our city and be able to enjoy our countryside."
Although these visitors-who come from as far away as Florida, but are mostly from Durham and Chapel Hill-don't arrive until fall is in the air, the McKees' work begins much earlier in the year, McKee said.
The family plants their corn in June. Once the corn reaches about two feet tall, they use a computer program to develop reference points, then bring surveyor's equipment to the field and use a tripod and prism to mark the points. This year's design required 972 different markers.
"[We] cut between those points with a weed eater," McKee said. "Our 12-year-old son ran the weed eater for four days, for eight hours or more a day, and never complained. So he actually designed it."
When it comes time for the haunted nights, the 12-year-old and his friends are the children of the corn. Another son, a junior in high school, haunts the maze with teammates from his baseball team.
It's all a family operation. Even the land has been in the McKee family since the early 1700s, and the family lives in a house adjacent to the maze.
"You don't find that very often anymore-that people are actually able to become established from that long legacy," McKee said.
The CornField Maze at McKee's Cedar Creek Farm is open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. Adult admission is $6. The Haunted Maze will be open Oct. 27, 28, 30 and 31 from dusk to 9 p.m., and costs $8. For more information visit www.mckeemaze.com.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.