"A-Mazing" Site Mate Applications
Matt Talladay, of Talladay
Farms, has created some "a-mazing" Corn Mazes. The mazes
are exciting and challenging while giving visitors the chance to enjoy
the country. 
Talladay
Farms designed the maze using Farm Works software, then a gps reciever
to guide their position in the maze while cutting it out with a mower.
Only one year into his maze project, Matt has taken mazes to a new level.
This year, Talladay Farms has two mazes. One maze is in the shape of Michigan,
and the other maze is a barn, truck, grain storage bin, and a farmer.
The corn mazes are cut into twenty acres of corn with around 8 miles of
total paths inside the maze.
The object is to find your way through the entire maze. There is only one way in and one way out of each maze, so it is a challenge. Last year the corn was only planted north and south making it easy to see down the rows to the next path. This year the corn is planted both north and south as well as east and west. This will create more of a challenge.
Read what Matt has to say about building his mazes!
The maze project was quite simple actually. I hand-drew a design and scanned that into Photoshop then squared everything up as well as marked the lines with the line tool. Farm Site would have worked just as well, only I did not have that on my laptop at the time. I then used my Ipaq and a rented GPS receiver from Farm Works to walk the boundary of the field where my maze was going to be cut out of. After I had the boundary, I just used the "3-point system" to geo-reference the image. I did the geo-referencing in the Farm Works calibration program. I sent the image back to my Ipaq as a jpeg for my background in Farm Site Mate.
I opened a new path log file and from then on, I just kept my GPS positioning cursor on my lines, which were my paths, and the path log file would color in where I had been so I knew where I had already cut. I just used a 60" zero turn mower, my Ipaq and rented GPS receiver. It was tricky at first trying to keep the cursor on the lines, as you can see by some of the mistakes in the aerial photo, but since then the corn has grown back in and I was able to "repair" my mistakes. I have many more photos on the maze website: www.Talladayfarms.com
The calibration and Farm Site Mate programs were very simple to use and were a perfect fit for this type of project. Next year will be even easier because I've got a better handle on the whole process now. Thanks for all the help! Farm Works is a great company and I really appreciate all of the support from you.