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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Pick a pumpkin, march a maze

Several local farms opening their fields to families seeking some fall fun

By , Columbian staff writer
Published:
11 Photos
Halley Copper, 11, of Battle Ground, walks through the pumpkin patch at Bi-Zi Farms in October 2014.
Halley Copper, 11, of Battle Ground, walks through the pumpkin patch at Bi-Zi Farms in October 2014. (The Columbian file photos) Photo Gallery

Bill Zimmerman wants to ensnare and imprison you — temporarily. He wants to confuse, frustrate and maybe even frighten you — a little.

Then he wants to send you home from Bi-Zi Farms in Brush Prairie happy, with a beautiful orange globe. Whether you doll it up with a smiling or scary face to show the neighborhood, or scoop out the insides and cook it into sweet-and-tangy pie filling, is entirely up to you.

October is pumpkin-picking season, as well as picking-your-way-through-mazes season, in Clark County. Several local farms are opening their doors and their fields to families and other fun-seekers eager to tease their senses with all that colorful, yummy goodness, as well as their brains with all those corny corridors.

“I really want to make mazes that are challenging for people,” Zimmerman said. “If you have it done in just a few minutes, that’s no fun.”

It was most gratifying to build five identical “traffic circles,” each met by four passageways, into one labyrinth a few years back, he said; it was far more delightfully puzzling than he’d expected. Also cool was a super-long “grand hallway” with eight smaller corridors leading away to goodness-knows-where; people found it tough to tell the ones they’d explored from the ones they hadn’t yet, he said. Anytime his visitors throw up their hands and happily start over, he said, he knows he’s succeeded.

Best of all, Zimmerman said, was outsmarting his math-and-geometry-whiz of a daughter who shrugged off the idea of following a shrinking spiral around and around to a predictable dead end. So Zimmerman figured out a tricky way to supply the spiral with an exit — and made it mandatory. You had to complete the spiral to finish the maze.

“I try to come up with something new every year,” he said.

How does a farmer grow a maze? Zimmerman said he does it by eyeball. “It’s just me on the back of a tractor,” he said. “Every year, it’s just me driving around, trying to be really careful.”

The biggest mistake you can make when you’re creating a maze out of living, lengthening material is waiting too long, Zimmerman added with a laugh. He aims to mow when the corn is about two-and-one-half-feet high, he said, and you can see all of what you’re doing. The one time he waited too long, he said, the corn grew so tall that he had no choice but to blindly mow a few yards at a time — and stop, stand up on the seat of his tractor, peer around to check that he was still on track, sit back down and mow a few more yards. Et cetera.

An expert corn-maze maker from California who once advised a farm marketing group that Zimmerman attends offered some obvious, no-duh advice: Don’t wait til your corn is six feet tall. “All of us laughed. Every one of us has done that,” Zimmerman said.

Patch perspectives

Speaking of escape — given the harsh, hot summer we just escaped from, how’s this fall’s pumpkin crop? Depends on whom you ask.

“Our pumpkin field used to have a jillion varieties, but they really got fried in the heat this summer — and they got hit with the southern squash bug,” said Joe Beaudoin of Joe’s Place Farm in East Vancouver. Beaudoin’s pumpkin patch is open for business this month — as well as his corn maze and his fort maze, which resembles Fort Vancouver on the outside — but he didn’t want to overpromise about his pumpkins, so call it 35 varieties this year, he said, instead of last year’s 60-plus.

La Center Farms has decided to pull out of the pumpkin patch business completely this year, owner Steve Boynton said. That’s because Boynton’s 27-acre farm focuses mostly on Christmas trees, he said, and because pumpkin patch competition grows fiercer every year.

“We discontinued it. We just had a small patch, and there are so many other farms getting into the pumpkin patch business — I can’t compete if they’ve got 20 people on tractors. When too many people jump into it, it’s not worth it.” (But next year, he added, the farm’s former Frightland will be back for Halloween. You’ll be able to grab a snack at the Donner Party Cafe, wander the Haunted Woods Maze and hopefully find the Nightmare Theater. No pumpkins, just plenty of spooky spirit.)

Zimmerman, meanwhile, said keeping his fields irrigated has been a challenge — but maybe the heat helped suppress a fruit rot fungus he normally figures on having to combat. Not a problem this year, he said.

“The pumpkins are fantastic,” Zimmerman said. “They look great.”

BI-ZI FARMS

• Where: 9504 N.E. 119th St., Vancouver. 360-574-9119. bizifarms.com

• Admission includes: Pumpkin patch and corn maze, bale pyramid and hay maze, farm animals and a “calf roping” (hay bale) station, wagon rides, two shots on the Pumpkin Launcher and one free pumpkin from the patch.

• Open in October: 2 to 5:30 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

• Nighttime corn maze: 6 to 9:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays (bring a flashlight).

• Cost: $10; seniors 62 and up, $8; free for age 2 and younger; $5 for the evening corn maze only.

JOE’S PLACE FARMS

• Where: 701 N.E. 112th Ave., Vancouver. 360-892-3974. joesplacefarms.com

• Featuring: Pumpkin patch with 35 pumpkin varieties, cornstalk teepee, hayrides, fort maze and corn maze, face painting, farm treats like cider and fudge, on-site restaurant.

• Open in October: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays.

• Cost: Free admission, pumpkin prices vary, $2 for fort maze, $2 for hayride, free 2-acre corn maze.

POMEROY FARM

• Where: 20902 N.E. Lucia Falls Road, Yacolt. 360-686-3537. pomeroyfarm.org

• Admission includes: Mile-long hayride down Pumpkin Lane, populated with more than 100 “pumpkin people,” on the way to the patch. Pumpkin flume, hay bale maze, historical tours, farm animals.

• Open through Oct. 25: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays, 11 to 4 p.m. Sundays.

• Cost: $6 for adults, $4 for kids ages 3-11. Pumpkin prices vary.

• Special event: Civil War re-enactors at the farm, Oct. 18 and 19.

VELVET ACRES GARDENS (“VANCOUVER PUMPKIN PATCH”)

• Where: 18905 N.E. 83rd St., Vancouver. 360-892-0434. www.vancouverpumpkinpatch.com

• Admission includes: Hay rides to the pumpkin patch every Wednesday afternoon and all day Friday, Satuday and Sunday; pick a perfect pumpkin, visit the covered petting zoo and in-barn hay maze

• Open in October: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.

• Cost: Free admission; $5 for hay ride, one pumpkin, children’s activities.

WALTON FARMS

• Where: 1617 N.E. 267th Ave., Camas. 360-834-2810. waltonsfarms.com

• Featuring: Unlimited rides around the farm on the barrel train, farm animals, corn maze, one pumpkin from the patch.

• Open in October: 3 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

• Admission: $8.

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