This puzzle's theme, "partners in farming," reflects the fact that the farm - once the site of the U.S. Naval Academy Dairy Farm and now the largest certified organic parcel in Maryland - is a joint venture between the farm's owners, Edwin and Marian Fry, and the parks department.
Guests never really see the whole picture. Instead, they take the map that comes along with the admission fee ($9 for adults, $5 for ages 5 to 12), read the pathways that make it up, and sally forth to navigate as little or as much as they want.
The MAiZE, the Utah-based maze company and the largest in the world, created the labyrinth this year, as it has done each fall since 2006. It's one of 200 mazes the firm has created this year. Five are in Maryland, including two in Anne Arundel County. (The second is at Greenstreet Gardens, a 55-acre farm in Lothian.)
Working from a design the client sends, the MAiZE crew uses a GPS system to etch an 11-acre outline, grid by grid.
The maze itself is born each May or June when the corn reaches about a foot in height, says Corey Spies, farm manager at Maryland Sunrise. That's when Herbst and crew come out for a day, stake out the pathways, and use all-terrain vehicles to spray the marked-off areas with a weed killer.
Farm workers keep the paths mowed as the corn grows up around them.
How does Herbst make the labyrinth tough to navigate?
"Over time, you learn a few tricks," he says.
Stepping into the maze, you're faced with a choice: walk straight, thus following a long line that bends left as part of one sail, or choose one of a series of right turns, any one of which might or might not take you toward the barn image on the other side.
You can't see anyone else over the corn, but you hear voices as other visitors try to find their bearings.
The Hewers, who entered the maze without a map, had to go back and get one. They materialize in a clearing, flushed and pleasantly puzzled on a warm afternoon.
"We're only halfway through," Jennifer Hewer says, "but I feel like we've walked five miles."
Annual bounty
Frantz founded the American Maze Co. to "bring 'agri-tainment' to the American landscape - and in so doing promote agri-tourism and respect for our agricultural resources."
"There is no more interesting cause," he says, "than to help secure the future of a working farm or a living history farm park."
