As the weather gets nicer, the activities on the farm increase exponentially! We’ve started building new scares for the Haunted Cornfield and the maze is cut. This year’s maze is from The Fireball Run. This is a great organization and any group of people who dedicate themselves to finding lost children has our full support!
The pumpkins are planted and we are looking forward to harvest as we planted many new varieties. It will be interesting to see how each variety grows and how the final pumpkins will turn out. Another reason why we love farming—every season has its own characteristics and those transfer into the crops. While we know what we are going to get, we never know what we are going to get!
We are currently open for events with corporations and families. Some of our recent bookings include the University of Phoenix, Japanese All Star Team, AEGON International, Benton County Farm Bureau and Mercy Care North. We love working with companies to develop memorable events for their employees and guests.
We’re just finishing the planting after preparing the soil. Preparing the soil is often a two-step process. We chisel-plow to initially break up the soil followed by the cultivator to break the soil into smaller pieces–then we plant the corn and soybeans. Since we have so much land to plant, the corn that was planted earlier in the process has already started to grow—some 2-3” tall already. But no time to rest, it’s time to start applying the herbicide!
The pumpkin patch is now our area of focus. Farmers know that crops need to be rotated because each crop pulls from and/or adds to various nutrients of the soil. By rotating crops, the nutrients are kept somewhat in balance. This year we chose to put the pumpkin patch by the corn maze so visitors can experience both in the same area.
The restoration of my 1950 Chevy flatbed truck is still in process. I just added the wooden sideboards to make sure the loads stay in place. Restoration is a journey rather than a destination, so I don’t expect I’ll ever be “finished” with this project. Good thing I love doing it!
Corn’s not the only thing growing. It’s spring and that means new life. Karen bought 7 new goats, including 4 kids (babies) to live in the Barnyard Buddies Petting Zoo. The visitors always like the goats and we are excited to see how these new ones will fit in.
School tours have already started and that means we had to clean the barns. No one LIKES doing this chore, but it was easier to stay focused knowing we are introducing many of them to some of the aspects of farm life.
Well, better get back to work before the crew notices I’ve slipped away.
Hi there! I hope everyone’s week has been going great! I know mine sure has! As of today, we are almost done planting. We have planted almost 3000 acres of corn and soybeans within the past 3 weeks. Wow! My guys and I have been putting in some long hours lately, but we love it. There are many activities involved in crop farming. Karen has been working hard at getting the Farm ready for the many visitors that will soon be arriving. Karen, Carissa, and Bunny have been cleaning the barns, lining up school tours, and will soon be planting many flowers to bring the Farm to life again this year! Julie has been busy filling lots of fudge orders for customers. Everyone seems to stay pretty busy around Bloomsbury Farm this time of year! Oh yeah, and Uncle Paul will soon be busy tending to our 7 new goats that will be arriving on Sunday! We are all looking forward to getting the Farm back into full swing! Well, I think it’s time for me to get back to work!
March is shaping up to be an exciting month for us on the farm. We are almost done with the work on the Chevy (check out the photos on our Facebook page).
Our most exciting news this year is that we are planning to add an apple orchard to our farm sometime next spring. In preparation of that goal, we are planning a trip to Indiana to tour some orchards. Right now it seems like a long time away, but we believe planning at the front end is vital to success in the long run. We are looking forward to adding apples to our harvest items. Add that to pumpkins and the other treats in the Sugar Shack and you can get all your harvest shopping done in one trip!
Other events this March for us will be heading to the maze convention in Branson, Missouri. This is always a great convention because it keeps us up to date on the wonderful world of corn mazes. This year’s maze is a MYSTERY. I don’t mean that it’s a mystery to us–of course we know what it will be. The mystery is to the visitors. While we usually post the decision in the spring, this year we are required to keep it a secret. We’ll have an official “unveiling” later in the season. We’ll keep you posted about all the hype as the time draws near.
Of course, we will be headed to the haunt convention at the end of March to pick up some new tricks for Scream Acres. We always want to keep new scares up our sleeve. Don’t want the visitors to get bored!
Well, actually it wasn’t a dream for us; it was a reality! We took the girls (Sammy & Jess) to San Diego after Christmas for a vacation. That’s right, a vacation. No conference, no convention, no meetings about corn mazes, corn yields or haunted houses. While we were there we were able to visit a number of restaurants and our favorite, by far, was the Irish Pub. Wouldn’t it be great to have a microbrew here on the farm . . . Wouldn’t it be great to have an Irish Pub on our property . . . Wouldn’t it be great to . . . Yea, that’s California Dreamin’!
Even though Bloomsbury Farm closed for the season at the end of October, we remained busy making fudge for holiday gifting. Our most popular flavors this year were Maple Walnut, Chocolate Peanut Butter and (no surprise here) Pumpkin. We take the orders, make the fudge, and then ship it out for the customers. We even had an order sent to Hawaii. At first we were concerned that it wouldn’t hold up to the warm weather. But remember how cold it was here? It was even cold in Hawaii, so the fudge made it there without a problem.
If you aren’t familiar with farming, winter may seem like a slow time of year since we aren’t planting or harvesting. But now is the time of year we move the grain we harvested from the bins and haul it down to Cargill, Penford, ADM and Quaker. Our days start at about 5:30 am when we load the semi with grain from the bin, head over to the appropriate location, wait in line to unload, return home, and do it again. Actually we make about three trips a day before 5:30 pm rolls around and we call it a day. Let’s see, two semis, each holding about 900 bushels of grain, each making three trips a day—we’ll be repeating this most days until March when the planting activities start the whole process again!
Next month we start checking over the equipment to prepare for planting and the opening of Bloomsbury Farm for 2010. I’ll keep you posted on how things are going. –Dave
Bloomsbury Farm and Scream Acres are closed for the season and we’ve begun taking down the various paraphernalia that goes with running an entertainment business. While we are closed to public, Karen and her assistants are still busy making fudge and taking gift basket orders for the holidays. And between now and opening day next year (sometime in late August or early September) we will be reviewing everything, attending conventions and planning next year’s mazes and family-oriented events. The fun never ends!
Just because the entertainment piece of our family business is winding down doesn’t mean my work is done. Now it’s time to focus on farming–the soybeans are done but we have quite a bit of corn yet to be harvested. After that rainy October, the warmer weather we had this November helped bring corn moisture down so it won’t have to do so much drying in our bins. We’ve begun chisel-plowing the fields to prepare them for next year (this involves using a piece of equipment, pulled behind the tractor, that digs up the soil and mixes the cornstalks in with the topsoil so they can decompose). We only chisel-plow fields that have been planted with corn that year, and we rotate the crops in our fields from year to year. If corn is planted in a field this year, then soybeans will be planted in that field next year, and vice versa.
Once harvest is over, I will spend the winter catching up on bookwork and planning for next year’s crop. This will include researching, choosing, and purchasing the different seed varieties I will plant, the various fertilizers I will use, and the herbicides I will need. I will also be busy entering into, and fulfilling contracts for corn and soybeans that I have already harvested, and even those that I have yet to plant in the upcoming year! Isn’t it amazing how times have changed and farmers can now sell their crop before they’ve even planted it? Well I sure think so, and that is actually how I sell more than half of my crops–by forward contracts.
I’m still here and I had so much fun blogging last year I decided to try it again! Dave is pretty busy with harvesting corn and soybeans, which is why I get to jump in again. I’m busy too, but with different kinds of things. My activities usually involve the entertainment side of Bloomsbury Farm. We are only open to the public in the fall, but the corn maze, pig races, barnyard animals, hayrack rides and other farm activities keep me busy from sun up to sun down. Once the sun goes down we gear up for Scream Acres on Saturday night (we added Thursday and Friday before Halloween to the mix), the area’s only triple threat haunt.
Here are some of the activities I’ve been focused on:
*Making fresh fudge each week (many, many flavors including Chocolate, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Pumpkin Pie, Apple Pie, Vanilla, Skeleton Scare, Donkey Droppings, Goat Droppings, Pralines & Crème, Rainbow Sherbet, and many more!),
*Making fresh, hand-dipped caramel apples, caramel apples with nuts and caramel apples dipped in chocolate.
*Picking large pumpkins, small pumpkins, mini pumpkins, and gourds.
*Entertaining field trips that visit the farm during the week, and public and corporate outings that visit on the weekends.
*Organizing the “haunters” that come out for Scream Acres.
*Keeping the Sugar Shack & Gift Shop organized and well-stocked with sweets and treats.
*Taking care of the animals – our Holstein calf, Oreo, and Petunia the pig…she’s a big ham!
What’s happening on the farm now? Well, pretty much everything that we started and talked about before is still being worked on, only we are farther into the project now than before:
Scream Acres: We are putting the finishing touches on everything, getting ready for opening night on October 3, 2009. I’m pretty excited about this year’s attraction–or should I say attractions. That’s right, we are doing a triple-haunt attraction this year. The Curtain Chaos (you saw pictures of the red and white stripes last month), the Dread Shed and the Haunted Cornfield. I’ve been putting up the props, laying electrical cords, air hoses and mowing the trails. Every year I feel challenged to help make these haunts better than the previous year. This is one type of event that you can’t just “set and forget.” Kids love to be scared and they can’t be scared if they know what’s coming. I’m up for the challenge this year. Bring ‘em on!
Chevy Flatbed: I’ve been working on this since last January! Each part has been sandblasted and painted. The pumpkin cannon is about ready to be sandblasted, painted and mounted on the flatbed. Those pumpkins are growing, turning from green to orange and just waiting for that cannon. (Don’t tell the wife, but I can’t wait either!)
The Corn Maze and corn texting are already in use. Of course, there were a few glitches here and there, but we’ve figured them out. Most important is that people are having a good time.
That’s about it, unless you consider setting up fall artwork, mowing the waterways, making fudge to sell in the Sugar Shack & Gift Shop, and preparing the corn cannon for the kids to use to be more work. Don’t worry, my time is coming. Harvest is coming and I upgraded my John Deere combine. This one has so many new features I had to attend a one-day class to learn them all. Oh, the boring life (ha!) of a farmer.
That’s about how I feel during the last few weeks. Even though the crops are in the ground and nature is taking care of things right now, I’m not sitting back and watching the corn grow–I’m busy working on the other side of the farm–Bloomsbury Farm, our tourism business. We are well known in Iowa for our pumpkin patch, corn maze, farm activities and our October haunt venue–Scream Acres. Someone has to build and maintain the entertainment pieces and it falls into my hands. The photos below show:
That’s us in the wooden structure, working hard on renovating the Haunted Barn in preparation of the October opening of Scream Acres. I’m also building the props for the fall haunt.
The old-fashioned looking water tower is part of Gemstone Mining that we had to build as part of our newest attraction. Visitors purchase a bag of mining rough from the gift shop and bring it down to the site. Water runs down a long wooden ramp and you get to mine for fossils or gemstones out of the sand. It’s pretty exciting to see what you can uncover in the water.
That’s blocks of hay beign pulled onto the flat-bed of the truck. We bale hay to put on top of the learning barn to feed the animals.
Those red and white stipes are the start of the Curtain Chaos. It’s a maze of red and white striped panels. It may not seem like much now, but most things don’t when you’re putting them together. I’ll let you be the judge of whether it is scary come October. Other things I’m working on for Scream Acres:
Maggot Room
Tool Room
Whiskey Still
Spinning Vortex
Of course, there is more going on to get ready for the pumpkin season and Scream Acres, but I’ll save that for another day. Check out the corn mazes we laid out earlier this year. This year you can bring your cell phones and receive clues through your phone on how to make it through the maze. Pretty a-mazing!!
Here it is July already and I’m busy spraying the corn and beans with herbicide. While it would be great to not have to use herbicide, the fact is, all plants like the sun and rain so when the corn grows, so do the weeds. The weeds compete with the corn and soybeans for water and nutrients, which is bad news for farmers. Once the weeds are gone, the corn is able to grow taller, stronger and produce more kernels, which is good news for consumers. We can’t get to “knee high by the 4th of July” if the weeds take all the nutrients! Actually that little ditty is way out of date. If my corn was only knee high by now, I’d be in trouble. Here on our farm the corn is knee high by the middle of June!
It may sound strange for July, but we are hauling the last of grain from the 2008 harvest. More importantly, we are vacuuming out the bins and cleaning them in order to make sure that the new grain doesn’t get contaminated.
When I’m not farming, I focus on helping Bloomsbury Farm get ready. That’s the agritainment part of our family businesses. Now that the corn is high enough, I’ve started to work on the mazes. Last year I explained how the mazes are cut and this year is really no different, other than the pattern. This year’s 10-acre maze is based on the CBS Sunday Morning Show, celebrating 30 years on the air! To compliment the 10 acre maze, our smaller kids maze will be based on the local CBS affiliate. The mazes will be open for fun when Bloomsbury Farm opens to the public at the end of August. Aerial pictures of the maze should be ready next month.
Now for the best news! I get to take a weekend off! Usually a weekend “off” means a convention about farming or agritainment. But this time is just for fun–I’m going to the NASCAR races with my wife.
