by Marcella Ortega
Daily Lobo
It took more than a few seeds to grow McCall's Pumpkin Patch.
Owners Kevin and Kirsten McCall began expanding their farm in Moriarty, N.M., in 1997 when they started allowing school children to pick pumpkins.
After that, its popularity grew.
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"On the weekends, people would show up," she said. "It kind of just evolved out of that."
The McCall family turned the farm into a park three years ago, adding mazes - including a haunted one last year for Halloween - hay rides, a pedal-kart track, corn and pumpkin cannons and other activities.
"I've had people on the farm for nine years," Kevin McCall said. "They've been paying us to entertain them. In the back of my mind, I had the idea that I wanted it to be the way it is today."
Students Rebecca Oubre and Sacha Candelaria visited the ranch Sunday. Oubre said she often drove past the ranch on the way to visit her family.
"I've never been here before," Oubre said. "I finally decided to come up and get pumpkins."
Oubre said she and Candelaria went on the hay ride and through the unhaunted corn maze. She said they ran into some trouble on the hay ride.
"We had a flat tire on the way," she said. "So we went and got our pumpkins and walked back."
Oubre said the corn maze turned out to be an adventure.
"We got lost," she said. "It felt like jeepers creepers going through there."
Kirsten McCall said her family added the haunted maze last year to appeal to high school and college students. Kevin McCall said he and his wife bought props for the maze in Chicago.
"There are other farmers we've known who have done it," he said. "We tried to make it as unique as we could."
Kirsten McCall said the haunted maze has characters that jump out at people and scenes such as graveyards. She said some of the characters are actors and others are motion-activated dummies. She said the actors are family friends of all ages.
"We used to have high school kids dress up," she said. "Some of their parents came out, and they had a lot of fun, so they started doing it."
McCall family friend Larry Best has worked at the farm for four years. He said he helped build the haunted corn maze and is in charge of letting people in.
He said they purposely made the entrance near the exit.
"The people standing in line see the other people come out screaming," he said. "It builds the suspense. They are getting ready to go into the unknown."
Best said he likes to tease visitors of the haunted maze with an egg timer. He said he likes to hold it to their ears when their time to go through the maze is almost up.
"I just play with their minds a bit," he said.
Best said the haunted corn maze is more frightening than the other maze, not only because of props, but because of light.
"The most light you can have is a glowstick," he said. "It's protection for our actors. We don't want them getting hurt."
Best said flashlights, which are given to people for the regular maze, are not allowed in the haunted maze. He said the policy was made because people might throw them at the actors when they get frightened.
Best would not comment on the sound effects in the maze.
"Yes, there are sound effects," he said. "We'll just leave it at that."
Best said the maze is one-third of a mile long and the average person completes it in 22 minutes.
"Twenty-two minutes is a long time to be scared," he said.
Kevin McCall said he wants to add pig races and a train to the park in the future.
For Best, last weekend proved to be a success at the pumpkin patch.
"We had double lines," he said. "They've come a long way from that bitty barn."
Harrison Brooks / Daily Lobo
A scarecrow overlooks the entrance to the haunted corn maze at McCall's Pumpkin Patch.
