CARIBOU, Maine — Goughan’s Farm in Caribou is gearing up for the fall season after completing a presidential corn maze and hosting a successful “Feed The County” fundraising event.
With the 2020 election just around the corner, this year’s corn maze is shaped after both Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Republican presidential nominee and incumbent Donald Trump.
“I’ve always looked at the corn maze as being a vehicle to have fun with,” said Mark Goughan, who owns and operates the farm with his wife Gloria and their family. “This is our 15th year of doing the maze and I can’t think of anything more on the edge than putting those two candidates out there.”
Goughan said he’s had no complaints about the content of the maze, and that he often hears guests crack jokes about the two candidates.
Goughan’s Farm in Caribou just completed a successful “Feed The County” fundraiser and is now gearing up for the fall season with the annual corn maze and by growing a plethora of pumpkins. (Chris Bouchard | Aroostook Republican)
“In today’s world, it doesn’t hurt to laugh,” he said.
Being the 15th maze created on the farm, Goughan said the maze-making process is more efficient now than ever. At first he said it would take three days just to put the flags up to mark where cuts need to be made, a process which is now done in a matter of hours.
“This was a unique year because everything was so dry,” he said. “It’s the first time we ever had to irrigate the corn maze. With all that heat and then giving it water, that stuff grew fast. I’ve never seen the corn maze grow as fast as it did this year.”
After working about six hours a day on the maze for a week, it was finished.
“Farmer Gloria and the girls were also out there painting pictures and signs for the maze,” he added, a process that he said can take just as long if not longer than the creation of the maze itself.
The farm also held its fifth annual Feed the County event on Sept. 5, a fundraiser in collaboration with Catholic Charities of Maine and numerous local businesses. He said the event raised about $7,000.
To accommodate the large crowd amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Goughan said he had to change the flow of traffic and that people were generally good about responding to the guidelines.
“It was a beautiful day,” he said. “You couldn’t have asked for a better day, and people are just yearning to get outside and do stuff.”
Overall, he said he and his family were just glad to be a part of the event this year. “I received about three or four really heartfelt thank-yous for putting it on, and that makes it all worth it for us,” he said.
And while this year’s drought has had a profound effect on local farmers, Goughan is growing pumpkins for the fall season and said he is fortunate to be able to irrigate his crops.
“If you can put water on your crops this year, you’ll do alright,” he said. “But when you turn on the key to the irrigation pump, the meter runs on dollars, not cents. And there are things you have to repair, and there’s more labor involved because somebody’s got to watch it.”
He said that while the costs to run the system are not insignificant, he’s glad he has the ability to irrigate his crops.
“I tell people I couldn’t sleep because I have to run the irrigation system, but I would’ve lost more sleep worrying about the yield if we didn’t have the irrigation system,” he said. “We invested in irrigation many years ago, and in the entire time I’ve farmed, this was the best year to have it.”
Overall, he said he hopes the farm can offer visitors a brief respite from the worries of their daily lives.
“When you come to the farm you can leave that cell phone home and just look around and say ‘This makes sense. I’m with my family. We’re laughing and we’re having a good time,’” Goughan said.
