Seeds of Change: Simply A-mazing
Graff family turns the corner on their Medina County farm, where getting lost has never been more fun
By Jody Horton
Getting lost is fun!
A helicopter touches down in an open field. Ken Graff hunches over and approaches it at a trot. He’s met with a smile of exhilaration and relief from a teenage boy in the passenger seat who pops out and is quickly replaced with another. Ken shouts something to the pilot over the whut-tut-tut of the rotors. They are both grinning and nodding. Ken holds his straw cowboy hat against the wind of the sweeping blades as he turns and shuffles back to the sign-up table under an oak tree where a short line of mostly young people have bought their tickets and await their turn for a ride over an amazing sight: a giant maze carved from a cane field.
Touchdown -- at the farm
This is not the kind of scene one would expect at a farm, but it’s not uncommon here at the Graff Family Farm in Hondo from late September through late November. It is then that this small corner of the Graffs’ land along U.S. Highway 90, about 40 miles west of San Antonio, is transformed into the South Texas MAiZE.
Now in its ninth year, the South Texas MAiZE—an “agri-tainment adventure” promising “farmtastic” fun—has become an effective, if atypical, solution for the Graffs to maintain their family farm. The main attraction is, of course, a giant maze—cut from 7 acres of sorghum Sudan grass known as haygrazer that’s grown to feed cattle. “It looks a lot like corn but is much more drought resistant,” Ken explains. Kids and adults alike enjoy the challenge of making their way through the giant labyrinth. On average, a walk through the maze takes one hour from start to finish.
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