[Dixielandjazz] Mike's Maze at the Warner Farm

[Robert S. Ringwald]

SUNDERLAND - It's a wonderful world in the cornfield called Mike's Maze at 
the Warner
Farm.

Landscape artist William B. Sillin has for the eighth year in a row created 
a portrait
- this time of jazz great Louis Armstrong with his trumpet - in an 
eight-acre field
that is part of the Warner Farm not far from the Connecticut River in 
Sunderland,
MA.

This year's maze has a twist. Sillin's son, J. Henry Sillin, 20, has created 
a music
maze game using lengths of metal tubing that play different notes and create 
20 different
songs that can be identified by those traversing the maze, said Sillin and 
his neighbor
Michael Wissemann, who owns Warner Farm.

"We call it a musical fence. We give people a metal rod and they walk along 
like
striking pipes in a pipe organ. It's a hoot. People love it," Wissemann 
said.

Last year Julia Child was the subject of the maze. Previous subjects have 
been Albert
Einstein and King Tut. This year finalists included Johnny Cash, James Brown 
and
Louis Armstrong, Wissemann said.

"Louis gained favor in the end. Will has to do the cutting. He found an 
album cover
that really appealed to him and that made the difference," Wissemann said.

"Louis is way more upbeat, and he's the father of jazz and that's the most 
American
music we have," Sillin said.

The picture is made using a grid system that relies on the squares made by 
tractor
tires as the corn is planted. The initial cutting is done when the corn is 
only five
inches tall. The trick is to keep the corn away once it is cut.

"The problem is it's like a grass, and it wants to keep growing. We've tried 
all
ways of doing, but it keeps coming back. We've hoed it out, we've rototilled 
it out,
we've mowed it out. It seems like we go through a lawn mower a year," 
Wissemann said.

The maze idea started eight years ago with three neighbor families, 
including Wissemann
and Sillin and another one, who is not involved, Wissemann said. One 
neighbor went
to a corn maze near Boston and suggested doing one here, he said.

"I thought about it in those dark days of winter. I talked to Will, and I 
said I'm
willing to do this if you are willing," Wissemann said.

The 175-acre Warner Farm grows a variety of vegetables, including sweet 
corn. The
corn in the maze is "cow corn," used to feed cattle, Wissemann said.


 --Bob Ringwald K6YBV
530/642-9551
916/806-9551 Cell
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band