You Have to Get Lost to See It!
Across Georgia, farm mazes are turning fields into seasonal artwork, with Dolly Parton, an American eagle and a surprising stand-in for corn all part of the story. Appreciating the design is easier than finding your way out.
At Jaemor Farms in Alto, the 2026 corn maze pays tribute to Parton, with a connection to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library and her commitment to childhood literacy. A field becomes a place to celebrate someone whose influence stretches from country music to children’s books. Getting turned around is simply part of the viewing experience.
The design gives a familiar fall outing something to say. Families can arrive expecting an afternoon among the stalks and find a recognizable cultural figure worked into the landscape. There’s a pleasing mismatch of scale here: an enormous picture, experienced one small decision at a time.
South Georgia has its own subject writ large. Poppell Farms in Odum is marking the nation’s 250th birthday with an American flag and a soaring eagle across its 10-acre maze. The farm grows and sells produce for its market, but this patch of ground has a seasonal assignment as a patriotic picture you can walk through.
And those towering stalks? Sorghum. The cereal grain grows tall like corn, giving the familiar “corn maze” label a botanical plot twist.
Together, the designs suggest a useful way to think about these fields: agriculture supplying the material, a navigable puzzle supplying the structure, and shared cultural references supplying the story. From above, paths help form an image. At ground level, those same paths become choices, wrong turns and family negotiations over who supposedly knows the way.
For Georgia families, that puts large-scale creative work within an ordinary autumn ritual. At Jaemor, pumpkin patch access comes with Harvest Celebration admission, though pumpkins cost extra. The farm lists daily October hours and field trips and group visits through November 6. Poppell’s fall season runs October 3 through November 1, with flashlight maze visits on Friday and Saturday nights.
The calendar is part of the appeal. These pictures belong to a growing season, with no permanent gallery wall waiting afterward. Their brief existence gives the annual outing a particular reason to happen now. You can study the overhead design first, then spend an afternoon discovering how little that helps at the next intersection.
Find more local arts and seasonal happenings in the Georgia Business Journal arts and entertainment directory: https://gbj.com/arts-entertainment
