Leaves are changing, there’s pumpkin spice everything and Halloween will be here before you know it. Everyone is attending their favorite haunted attractions, pumpkin patches and corn mazes. One farmer in Minnesota is going down the autumn path less taken – or in his case, likely never before.
Ted Galaty, owner of the four-acre corn maze and haunted attraction Fright Farm in Maplewood, Minnesota has replaced his corn with hemp plants, according to a story from the Post Bulletin. “Everybody’s seen a corn maze. I wanted to do something different,” said Galaty.
Galaty made the decision to use hemp instead of corn because the corn crop is becoming more expensive to grow and had been depleting the soil in his field of its precious nutrients, causing a noticeable decrease in yield.
“Not rotating was depleting the soil. I was just putting more and more fertilizer, more and more spray on my crop. It’s amazing what can be done with hemp and what it does for your soil at the same time,” said Galaty.
Galaty’s Minnesota Hemp Maze, which seems to be the first of its kind, was officially open for business on September 22nd. Almost a month later, about 300 visitors have come through his hemp maze. The customer admission prices have already covered the cost of buying and planting hemp seeds.
For its inaugural season, Galaty’s hemp maze will remain planted, but he told the Post Bulletin that by next year at this time his goal is to have the proper harvesting equipment and buyers lined up once he shuts down the hemp maze attraction.
Just in case any parents might get worried about bringing their children to a maze that features plants closely related to psychoactive marijuana, Galaty made sure to point out that hemp contains very little THC and does not get you high.
“Your lungs would actually fail before you could get high on this hemp,” Galaty said.
The Minnesota hemp maze is yet another addition to the plethora of uses for one of the most versatile plants on the face of the earth. Back in June of this year, the Senate unanimously passed an industrial hemp measure, facing no objection. The legislation also designated June 4th – 10th as Hemp History Week. Galaty’s innovative Minnesota Hemp Maze should be added to the week of appreciation for one of the oldest, strongest and most useful crops grown on U.S. soil.
