Corn Pone

Just outside of Pataskala, Ohio, there is an apple orchard. It’s called Lynd’s Fruit farm and is reasonably sized, as orchards go. For the past forty years, the people who own Lynd’s Fruit Farm have run a business where families come and pick their own apples by the bag-ful and pay for them before they leave. As the years have gone on, they have expanded their business and in addition to families being able to pick apples, they can buy cider, peaches, pumpkins, and pay to find their way through an enormous corn maze grown in a different shape every year. This apple orchard and its annual corn maze typifies the Midwest spirit in all of its “corn pone” glory.

Lynd’s Fruit Farm is pretty ordinary. Visiting any other apple orchard in the Midwest would produce an experience similar to visiting Lynd’s, making it a good representation of the Midwest. Not unlike the Midwest, Lynd’s too has survived the test of time. While some things have changed, many others have stayed the same, in both the Midwest and at Lynd’s. Even when change comes, it is slow. Lynd’s has taken forty years to accumulate the variety of crops they offer to the public today, while the slow and steady attitudes of people in Midwest towns take decades, even centuries, to evolve their opinions. Finally, and most obviously, the Midwest is a center of agriculture, so an orchard rife with growth is a clear representation of the Midwest.

The corn maze itself represents the Midwest. Every year, the Lynd family plants their corn maze in a different design. Corn, which is a very ordinary crop, is morphed into an enticing, interesting affair with its conversion into a maze (though some would