This year's Lacombe Corn Maze pattern at the Kraay Family Farm just west of Lacombe. (Photo: Kraay Family Farm)

By Sheldon Spackman

corn maze opens friday

Kraay Family Farm celebrating 20 years

Jul 16, 2019 | 2:07 PM

One of central Alberta’s best-known family attractions is celebrating 20 years in business this summer.

The Kraay Family Farm, home of the Lacombe Corn Maze, is opening for a new season this Friday, July 19.

Rachel Kraay admits she and her husband and his parents, who all own the farm together, weren’t aware of the big milestone until earlier this year.

“It’s gone fast but we’re pretty excited,” she exclaims. “It kind of feels like you’ve established yourself I guess.”

Kraay says their journey began two decades ago when her husband’s parents were hog farmers.

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“At that time hog prices were not good at all, so they were looking for something to supplement their income and keep them doing things,” she recalls. “They like to do fun things, so my husband had actually seen a corn maze or a similar farm in B.C. once and so they got in touch with those people and learned a little bit about it and just kind of went for it with some friends of theirs. Then five years after that, my husband and I joined them.”

Kraay says they started with just a corn maze, a big slide and a couple of fire pits.

“The corn maze changes every year but to keep our own interest and those of our guests, we like to add new things every year,” she explains. “I think as our kids have grown too, you realize they like change and they like to try new things. We would start with some of the younger activities and now we have a wide range for all ages, so it kind of happened naturally but we do now realize we’ve started a tradition of always having something new.”

Aside from regular updates like painting and other upkeeps, Kraay says visitors this year can expect to see an expanded corn barn for kids and additional truck games as well.

“We find an old truck that is being not used in a field and we build a big game on the back of it, so we’ve got a couple of those” says Kraay. “One of our newest activities in the last number of years was an adventure course, like a low ropes course, so we added a couple more obstacles to that and then we added some extra ziplines on another part of the farm because that was also a big guest favourite.”

As far as the corn maze itself is concerned, Kraay says their inspiration for this year’s pattern came from wanting to thank their supporters through all the changes over the years.

“There’s been people that have come for the last 20 years,” says Kraay. “Just to acknowledge that this has been a place where people have created memories, we’re really just thankful to be part of that.”