Has anyone been seriously lost in a corn field?

Some of the corn fields around here are huge. And the ones in Iowa and Kansas are much bigger than the ones around here.

I would imagine a person could get easily lost when walking in such a corn field when the stalks are over 8 feet tall. Has there ever been a case where someone ventured into a corn field and gotten so lost that they had to bed down and wait until morning to continue? Or has there ever been a case where someone got so lost that search parties were organized?

Several years ago an elderly lady got lost in a cornfield and was not found by the search parties until the next day. This happened in a rural county in Tennessee where the cornfields are much smaller than out west. I’m sure children have been lost in them many times.

There are corn mazes even here in New England so I guess technically many have and many even pay for it. Your OP is actually a pretty spooky thought though and I would guess it has happened before.

I have seen the eastern Midwestern corn fields but how big do the biggest ones get without, say an intersecting road or some other landmark you can see when you are in it?

Unlike the wilderness, corn fields are laid out in rows. IANA farm expert (farm clueless is more like it) but it seems to me that if you follow a row you’re bound to get to the edge of the field pretty soon. I doubt many fields, even in Iowa, are more than 1 mile in the longest direction without at least a dirt road.

If you set off cross-row you’re likely to end up making a curve or even a big circle, just as hikers usually do in a forest.

I got lost in one when I was four. It was the most terrorfying 10 miniera of my lift.

I have to agree. Anyone who would get lost in a cornfield would also be in peril of getting lost anywhere. Such as really young children or senile oldsters.

I believe some are circular, or even spiral.

And some may not be neat rows, but contain intersecting sections.

I would have to see a cite on this. Why do that? It makes cultivating more difficult in both cases and wastes space in the circular case. Circles don’t fit together snugly like rectangular fields do.

Wheat and other small grains that don’t have to be cultivated, maybe.

My father just finished planting his corn and soybeans for the season. Here’s the deal: They’re planted in rows. Additionally, farmland in the midwest and elswhere where they have very large fields is laid out in 1 mile square grids. That is, every corner you stand at outside a field (of whatever type) is exactly one mile from the next intersection. Typically, farm houses tend to be “planted” in specific places on these grids (depending on water availability, of course) so that the ends of their driveways are either one mile or one half mile apart. My grandparents live exactly one half mile from my parents on the same farm.

So…were you standing on the edge, contemplating getting lost in a field, the farthest you’d be from the other side is one mile. Ditto for soybeans, which someone short enough (a child) could also get lost in. Granted, it would be no easy task to tumble over the rough earth between crop rows for one mile. Ask anyone who’s ever “walked beans.”

Farm kids are told this at birth to avoid panicking them when they inevitably wander in looking for arrow heads. I can’t vouch for city folk.

Also, the story about things being planted in circles…VERY doubtful. Farm machinery is expensive. Farm land is laid out to maximize plants per acre. New machinery to change the shape of the rows so that they’re planted circularly or what-have-you? SERIOUSLY not likely. My dad’s looking at a new planter for $170,000 right now. Mind you, that’s ONLY the planter…not the tractor needed to actually run the planter across the field.

The mazes they make aren’t planted the same way…they’ve got paths cut through them so that you get lost in those paths. They aren’t intended for people too stupid to follow a row to the end of the section.

There WAS a push some time ago (sorry, my only cite is my dad’s opinion and the farm community I grew up in) to do something called “drilling” crops. This involved planting things MUCH closer together than they typically are, the idea being, more plants = more yield. Of course, that’s not TRUE, since they tend to choke one another out and I think the maximum plant/acre/yield ratio has pretty much already been determined.

Also, see my previous post about the cost of farm machinery. Typical combine harvesters can run into the HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of DOLLARS. You’d have to get a pretty big difference in your per acre yield to accommodate that kind of investment.

I don’t know as much about wheat because I’m not from a place where it’s very common (though, they do plant it as “government land” and let it go without being harvested in order to keep the price of crops up by planting less of what they want a high price on. Gov. pays you not to plant basically). Anyway, I do know it’s planted closer together and still in rows. And I’d still be willing to bet the same machinery cost/yield ratio exists when considering whether to try some new experimental $300,000 piece of equipment.

No. Any place where the crops change direction or “intersect” as you put it, involves a separating “waterway” for run off or some other gap in the fields. The only place rows of grain “intersect” is the last 8-12 rows (depending on how big a planter the farmer has) on the very edge of the field, where you’d easily be abel to see that you were now exiting the land of “Children of the Corn.”

Another reason the rows are very neat and straight now is because the tractors driving the planters are now highly computerized. One inch to the right or left and an alarm goes off, warning the farmer to get back on track. They are VERY precise, and actually pretty complicated, machines.

No Twilight Zone references about being sent to the cornfield?

I’m disappointed.

Corn in Iowa is drilled. The plants are close spaced and they pour on the fertilizer to get 150 bushels/acre. This has come in as a result of herbicides. It used to be that the corn was “check planted” which means planted in rows in both directions. This was done so that the field could be cultivated one direction and then the other so has to better control weeds. Now herbicides control weeds and so the corn can be drilled, i.e. planted in rows in only one direction. This also helps reduce soil erosion since you can plant the rows on the contour perpendicular to the downhill direction and then when you cultivate you create a lot of little terraces to hold back the water.

Brilliant! I hadn’t thought out all the benefits of doing this. It wasn’t something my dad felt was worth it. Now, I sort of wonder why. I could ask him about it again. He’s one of those old farmers, set in his ways though.

How close ARE The rows? Seems like the soy is about 18 inches apart in my neck of the woods (err…my family’s anyway…I’m actually in Boston now).

Circular cornfields Also wheat, cotton, sorghum, oats, etc. It seems a waste of space, but this is a section of the country that has miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. The more precious commodity is water and this arrangement allows irrigation from a single source at the center of the field.

It would be difficult to get too lost in one of these fields, as the largest is a mile in diameter.

I’ve seen the circular fields of small grains. Is suppose the corn fields aren’t cultivated and they just either combine them without regard to rows or chop the whole plant up for silage.

It would be really difficult to get lost in a circular field. The irrigating line rolls on truck-sized tires that leave a distnct trail one could follow to the actual water pipe, then follow that out to the edge of the circle.

Sometimes there is a well at the center of the circle. But even then you can’t get lost. A well means a pump which means electricity which means a line of poles out to at least the edge of the field.

The field (or more properly, the irrigated part of it) may be a circle, but the corn is still planted in nice, straight rows.

30" wide rows is the default in the U.S., but I’ve seen corn planted in all sorts of configurations from 42" down to 18".

Wow! I’ve never seen such a thing. Seems like it would be more difficult planting, but there must be something that makes it easier that I just can’t think of.

signed,
stumped farm girl

Anyone for a discussion of cow tipping next? :wink: