STERLING -- When two-thirds of the cornfield making up Davis' Mega Maze had to be replanted weeks before it was scheduled to open, co-owner Larry Davis did the only thing he could: He reseeded and hoped for lots of hot, humid weather.
He got his wish. Davis' Mega Maze opened for its fifth season last month and will welcome visitors through mid-October, or for however long the crop lasts.
''Mazes really illustrate what farmers have to put up with," Davis said. ''We can't control time, can't control ground conditions, and can't control the weather." Luckily for him, corn plants can grow up to six inches per day in humid weather.
The maze is eight acres with nearly three miles of pathways cut out of 4 million corn and sorghum plants. (Sorghum plants look just like corn, but without the ears.) This year's layout, designed by British maze designer Adrian Fisher, is considered by him to be one of the top three mazes in the world in terms of difficulty.
Increasingly, New England farmers have turned to public mazes as an income stream, an undertaking, like hay rides and petting zoos, known as ''agritainment." The Peavey family of Corinna, Maine, opened their maze in August honoring the 2004 World Champion Boston Red Sox.
For the Davis family, such innovation is nothing new.
''There's not a lot you can do agriculturally in New England that we haven't done," said Davis of his family's farm, which, since 1846, has at various times served as a fruit and dairy farm, vegetable farm, and cider mill.
Still, the maze business isn't easy and the barriers to developing a challenging field maze are high. Davis said it took his crew nearly 14,000 man-hours to plant the crop, cut the paths, remove 90,000 rocks, and insert 7,400 stakes to mark the pathways.
If you build it, will they come? Davis certainly hopes so. His business plan calls for 100,000 visitors this year. The maze attracted nearly that many last year.
The Davis family's first maze opened in 2001, after a small maze exhibit at Davis' Farmland, the farm they have opened to the public with endangered livestock animals, pony rides, apple picking, and play areas, was a flop. Undaunted, the family hired Fisher, the world's best-known maze designer, and took a gamble. Fisher, who designs more than 50 field mazes worldwide every year, says Davis' Mega Maze is his ''flagship" maze in North America.
''Call it Yankee ingenuity, call it farmers' stubbornness," Davis said of his family's ambition to operate one of the best mazes in the world. ''People thought we were insane."
Because a corn maze is a natural structure and has to be re-created every year, most of them have a theme. In the past, Davis' Mega Maze themes have included dinosaurs and the Wild West, but this year's maze has gone one step further with its Superhero Maze that features an elaborate system of gates that change the configuration of the maze. It can be configured at least 72 different ways.
''Our idea is that no two visits will ever be the same," Davis said. The gates will be changed weekly, or, if there's demand, daily.
The maze was designed for adults, but Davis says children, especially those ages 8 to 12, often solve it more quickly than their parents do. The maze also features 10 bridges and two lookout towers, a snack area, misting stations, and several crawl-though huts.
Like most mazes, there is more than one way to solve the puzzle and it takes visitors anywhere from one to six hours to make their way through. The Superhero maze was designed to take about an hour and a half.
