Finding their way in Danville

Drawing ‘mazers’ to Danville

“I have people who come from many states, a four-hour drive, every year just to challenge me or Dayna. We have third-generation mazers now,” Mike said.

Mike and Dayna were working as physical therapist assistants in southern New Hampshire when they began looking for a way back to the farm where Dayna grew up.

“Nobody else was going to take over the farm. We didn’t want to lose this,” Mike said.

A way to keep the farm: the Great Vermont Corn Maze

The idea came from hosting their young nephews in Vermont for a week each year and “seeing young boys filthy, dirty, sunburned, and just having a great time.”

In 1998, the concept of a corn maze was so new that “in the first three years, we spent a lot of time telling people we were not selling corn,” Mike said.

Today, the maze draws up to 7,000 visitors in a ten-week season. Mike, known as “Mike the Bridge Guy” stands on a bridge in the middle of it all. “I spend the day just surrounded by people laughing, people from different walks of life helping each other solve the maze, sharing water,” Mike said. “We are literally part of people’s lives, and they’re part of ours. It’s these little mini reunions we have every year.”

The maze also helped carry the farm. “The maze is paying for the land at the moment. The farm wouldn’t still be in the family without it,” Mike said. Though, he and Dayna still work per diem in physical therapy. “Without off-farm work, you’re not keeping land in today’s world.”

A secure future on secure land

Land made it possible. In 2021, Dayna’s father conserved 134 acres of farmland and woods and this past year the family conserved 39 acres they had leased for years and recently bought. On both occasions, conservation funding helped the family secure land for farming — the Pattersons were able to pass the family land to the next generation, and buying additional land for the farm operation became more affordable.

“A big thing with grazing is graze it quick and then let it rest for a long time. To do that, you’ve got to have land to move the cows through,” Jake said. “Having something like this program [conservation] makes it more attainable to afford land. It’s helped make the future a little more secure.”

Photo: The fourth and fifth generation on the land, Roy Patterson (left) and his daughter, Dayna Boudreau.

A sixth generation on the land

The family used to require each generation to work off the farm for two years before coming back. They broke the rule for Jake so he could learn from his grandfather, who is 75 and still working beside him. “Now he’s had ten years of grandpa, learning everything,” Mike said. “It’s worked out really well, and it’s kept him young, I think.”

A sixth generation is already out on the land, too. Jake and his wife, Ali, a veterinarian, have a one-year-old daughter who rides in a backpack most days while he does chores. “If I don’t take her outside,” he said, “she throws a fit.”

Photos by Kyle Gray.