Farmer tries hand at agritourism Maine moose maze in cornfield debuts at Caribou’s Goughan’s Farm

CARIBOU – Mark Goughan has created a 280-by-280-foot moose maze in a 6-acre cornfield at Goughan’s Farm on Route 161, a tourism experiment that will be open to the public for two months, starting the first weekend in September.

The former potato grower turned agritourism farmer wanted to create another attraction for his operation that once raised 400 acres of potatoes. Now it grows fruits, vegetables and Christmas trees; has hayrides, a petting zoo, a merry-go-round; and makes homemade ice cream.

“We’ve developed quite a nice attraction for people,” Goughan, 51, said Friday of his and his wife, Gloria’s, farm. “I just thought this might be a natural thing for us, adding another feature to the farm.

“Our farm is a hobby that we try to make a living with,” he said. “The moose is a natural animal of northern Maine, like the bear, which I toyed with before deciding on a moose for our first try this year.”

Farmers across the country are trying corn maze field puzzles, and some companies create whatever designs farmers want. Goughan found that avenue expensive at first. After all his work, he thinks the money may be well spent.

This year, however, he did most of the work himself, with the help of friends.

People have asked him to create something different, and he thought it might be an asset for the farm.

“It’s little twists and turns where we try to combine assets of the farm to raise tourist dollars,” Goughan said. “It gives entertainment, and farmers can use what they already have.

“I resisted the idea for two or three years because of weather concerns and raising corn,” he said. “New varieties have been developed; one grows fast and tall to do this kind of activity.”

The demand and his own curiosity made him try it. A lousy spring made him think twice about doing something he had not done before.

Once decided, he planted a 6-acre plot of corn, growing both directions so people can’t look down the rows for a way out, and used a highway moose sign for his design. A surveyor helped him create a moose design grid for his field, and he went in and cut out the design with a weed wacker, after the corn had grown.

The moose maze is “smack-dab” in the middle of the 6-acre corn plot. He fertilized and used normal cultivating practices throughout the season for his masterpiece.

“I couldn’t believe how good it looked when a friend, a pilot, took some pictures from the air,” he said. “Thank God.

“It was a lot more work than I envisioned, at first,” he said. “I hope people come and enjoy it.”

Weather permitting, his maze will be open from the weekend of Sept. 3 to Halloween. He hopes to have night excursions, with people using headlamps, and create some kind of haunting program when Halloween nears.

He has no idea whether his creation will succeed, and he needs a lot of people to make it work. In the end, he said, he had to try it.

Goughan’s Farm is not far from the former Loring Air Base, which gave him 40 percent of his business when he changed from growing potatoes in the late 1970s. After the closing of the base, he knew he needed to do more things to survive.

He and Gloria started Goughan’s Farm in 1976. They started with potatoes and a half-acre of strawberries. A few years later they had 20 acres of strawberries and 400 acres of potatoes. They needed to make decisions.

Now they have all kinds of things going there, and only 1 acre of potatoes, for their vegetable stand.