Since 2005, Stoughton Farm in Newark Valley, NY has created impressive, gigantic designs with their annual corn maze, and they’ve honored everything from renewable energy to helicopters to anti-bullying awareness. This year, however, they’ve outdone themselves with a fantastic Nintendo-themed maze, which features Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, and Yoshi’s disembodied heads.
As you might imagine, creating art at this scale is quite a feat, one that requires a lot of patience and careful planning. “We lay it out into grids and then go in and take the corn out where the pathways should be. We do it when you can still see over the corn, before it gets too tall,” Tim Stoughton said to ABC News. “It’s a lot of math. It’s laying it out in grids and seeing where you are.”
Unless you count their 2012 Sleepy Hollow maze, this year’s Mario maze is their first foray into agricultural pop culture art.
“My wife, Deb, decides the theme,” Stoughton said. “She just liked the idea of the Mario brothers because everybody pretty much knows what they are and it’d be fun for the kids to see.”
The level of collaboration between the couple and the fact that Stoughton referred to is as “the Mario brothers” makes their 2007 maze, which honored their 50th wedding anniversary, all the more adorable.
If you’re able to make it down to Newark Valley, the maze will be operational from September 17 to October 31, so find the hours of operation and more information at the Stoughton Farm website. Also, I think we should be commended for not making a single maize/maze joke in this article.
Featured image: Stoughton Farm
