Not all of the real estate from nursery rhymes and fairy tales is created equal.
Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater's bright-orange abode, where he keeps his Marie Antoinette look-alike wife, is so light that one person easily rolled it into place on a recent workday at Clark's Elioak Farm in Ellicott City.
Even the Gingerbread House that Hansel and Gretel long ago discovered on a trek through the forest slid easily off a flatbed truck, with just a few pairs of hands and a two-by-four guiding it to its cozy resting spot amid the white pines.
But the Rock-A-Bye-Baby Tree - a 19-foot-high behemoth on whose bough the cradle will forever await its calamitous fate - is being repaired on location at the farm after being moved there in three sections in late 2007. Unlike its fiberglass or wood-frame counterparts, the weighty trunk is constructed of cement.
As the 22-acre farm prepares for its annual April 1 opening, the last of the beloved remnants of the Enchanted Forest storybook theme park are being readied and coaxed into place on the Clark property at the northwest corner of Centennial Lane and Route 108.
"It's just been the most incredible project," said Martha Clark, farm owner and daughter of the late James Clark, a longtime state senator who placed the 420-acre parcel in agricultural preservation in the 1980s. An additional 120 acres, also in preservation, is owned by her brother, Jamie Clark.
But there's a new twist to the evolving display of nostalgia at the Clark property, which opened its petting farm in 2002 and averages 80,000 visitors annually.
The recent additions are taking up residence in the new Enchanted Forest Farm Maze, a 14-station feature that Clark dreamed up when surveying what was to be a cut-your-own Christmas tree area.
Deer had nibbled some of the evergreen specimens to death, others had been nicked by mower blades and still others had grown too tall for holiday use, Clark said. As she walked through the pines one day, Clark realized there was a natural, serpentine path that could be followed through the 1 1/4 -acre plot with enough space to park some of the last amusement park pieces at its bends and turns.
"It just dawned on me that we could create this for visitors," Clark said. "There will be an activity booklet with questions you can only answer if you go through the maze."
When the petting farm opens Wednesday, there will be more than 30 figures and structures from the Enchanted Forest scattered across its fields.
