Corn maze coming to Strathmore

Times Reporter

 

The Cheadle Lions Food Grains project officially kicked off on April 2. This year the Lions are hoping to promote more community involvement and are bringing in a feature they think will do just that. 

“We’re going to grow 80 acres worth of corn, a small part of which will be cut into a corn maze,” said Matt Gosling, Chairperson for the project.

“The rest of the project will include about 200 acres roughly, of barley and both crops will be silaged for local feed lots in the area, likely auctioned off. We’re going to allocate money to the Canadian Food Grains Bank and local charities as well.”

They are hoping the corn maze will be ready in time for the Heritage Days weekend. Gosling said they plan to run it until the silaging/harvesting takes place around the end of September, or early October. The barley will be harvested and silaged in early August. 

“We wanted to involve the community a lot more in this project and the location couldn’t be better for that,” said Gosling.

“All of the money raised is going to charity, to one of either the Canada Food Grains or local charities.” 

The location of the corn maze will be is on the east side of Strathmore, across from Walmart and George Freeman Trail. 

“We started the project back in 2007, it was something the club had always wanted to do, and we have a lot of farmers in our club and it just kind of snowballed from there,” said Gosling. 

He said he had joined the club that year and was assigned the chairperson because of his role and contacts in the agricultural industry. He said the involvement of local producers, industry partners and sponsors has been overwhelming, as far as supporting the project.

“If it wasn’t for other Lions Clubs in our district the project would not be possible either,” said Gosling. 

Last year there were only 30 to 40 people out, due to the weather, but Gosling said they had about 500 people out on harvest day the first few years. He said he is hoping they will have a lot more people involved this year because it will be taking place over more weekends, and there will be the maze, which is a good family event. The maze will be a way to make more people in the community aware of the project, while getting to know more about the Lions and other service groups.