TREINEN FARM CORN MAZE AND PUMPKIN PATCH

A DAY ON THE FARM IN FALL

It was a perfect autumn day, temperature in the mid-sixties, clear skies, a gentle breeze and enough fall color to make the hills of Lodi, Wisconsin still sing their autumnal song.

We've known Julie for almost as long as we've been back in Madison. It's on her family farm that one of America's premier corn mazes has delighted and entertained thousands of guests for the past several years. This year Travel Magazine, USA Today, MSN and the Travel Channel have honored the Treinen corn maze and pumpkin patch as one of the country's ten best. Even Architectural Digest singled out Treinen Farm as one of the best in the nation. I couldn't believe that Julie and her family beat us to an editorial in Architectural Digest, but their honor was well deserved.

Everything on the farm is worked out to perfection. The farm is located on Highway 60 just outside of Lodi, Wisconsin. The farm is impossible to miss. Parking is on one side of the highway and looks more like a parking lot for a major athletic event.

For safety they've added a human size culvert going under the highway as a passage into the farm proper. Local kids are employed with wooden wagons to help guests carry their pumpkins from the fields back to their cars. The service is free but these kids make a killing on tips.

There is an admittance fee and a few competitive events have a small fee but everything else is free and there are activities for everyone. Expect lines, especially for heading out to the pumpkin patch.

It's probably the most photogenic part of the experience. Alan Treinen, the eighth child in the family of ten owns and runs this now massive operation. It's Alan who breeds and trains the Belgian Draft horse teams that pull the huge wagons out into the field for those wanting to take a pumpkin home with them.

They are very careful to not overtax the horse teams so they're switched out on regular rotation. Just watching the process of hitching and unhitching the teams is a spectacle.

Guests line up to board the wagons and then when they return their arms are always laden with pumpkins

There's a bin right there where they can wash down their finds

or an area set aside with baby cribs to store your pumpkin while you go off to explore the rest of the farm.

Kids are treated to all sorts of adventures. There's the rubber duckie water pump where kids use an old water pump to send rubber ducks down a shut and into a galvanized mini-lake

There are pony rides for those not suffering from equine fear.

Molehill Mountain provides the thrill of a giant slide through a tunnel made from PVC culvert pipes.

And if that's not enough to entertain the kids let them loose in the Tractor Tire Playground and watch them get filthy dirty in amongst the piles of sand and rubber tires.

For the bigger kids there's the pumpkin slingshot where you can catapult a small gourd or pumpkin into the pond in an attempt to hit a floating target

or for a dollar you can challenge your sense of balance and climb Jacob's Ladder. If you can reach the top without falling you win a sawbuck. I'm guessing this is a real moneymaker for them. I've never seen anyone reach the top

Then there are the animals, from miniature goats

to a pack of baby pigs with names like Bacon and Pork Chop a sadistic nod to their ultimate demise.

Perhaps the biggest animal draw is the kitty house. There's always a line to get in and spend time with a slew of kittens.

Most people who come to the farm and maze spend a good part of the day there so food is also a big part of the experience.

The food shed houses a snack bar featuring Lodi's award winning bratwurst, a Wisconsin staple along with cheese curds, chili dogs and malts and ice cream

A trip to the Old Chicken House Store is a mandatory stop before anyone leaves the farm and heads back to the tunnel and the parking lot.

Inside is where they stash the caramel apples and cinnamon donuts all locally made and totally delicious. Try to find a four-dollar caramel apple in New York. I dare you.

I have gone to the farm every year since we've know Julie and every year I make sure I don't leave without my year's supply of root beer jelly. I'm from Wisconsin and it's in my blood even if the first ingredient listed is sugar. I don't care.

I guess I need to end with the maze. It's great if you've got a group but on my own I'm not that into it.

Mazepic The amazing view is overhead and that's impossible to do without a drone but the aerial pictures are amazing.

When you're on the ground it just looks like corn but the thrill is getting in and then getting lost.

Fortunately they hand out maps so you can sort of get yourself out but I've known people who've ended up in there for hours trying to find their way back to the entrance.

For the really small ones they offer a Children's Maze. It's actually more my speed.

The farm will remain open until the second weekend in November. Put on your shit-kickers, come with hunger for what Wisconsin has to offer and load up on a few pumpkins still good for that Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.
















THE GALLERY

Southwest Wisconsin Farm Landscape
Zane Williams, photographer
Contact Zane Williams Photography

OPEN HOUSE NEW YORK 2016 PART II

SUNDAY IN NEW YORK
THE GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL MEMORIAL

I started the day closer to home. It was a shorter trip up to Riverside and 122nd Street. I took the subway to 125th and then a short walk over to Riverside Park and the site of Grant's Tomb.

The country's largest mausoleum cradles the tombs of Ulysses S Grant and his wife, Julia. Laying in rest is the general who led us out of the nation's largest and most destructive civil war and then as president began to lead the nation to healing and a state of peace.

Inscribed over the entrance to the mausoleum is the quote most associated with the general, "Let Us Have Peace", a quote as poignant today as it was back then.

As I walk inside I was first struck by the austerity of the space. There's a well located in the center of the floor in a room constructed almost entirely of marble. The railing around the well is a very simple unornamented ring of marble.

As you approach the edge of the well the contrasting dark stone caskets can be seen on the floor below simply engraved with the names Ulysses S Grant and Julia D Grant

but when you look up the view is very different and very inspirational. The carved nymphs, the coffered ceiling and the American eagles all combine in a very patriotic and spiritual way.

It was hard to walk out of Grant's tomb without having your emotions stirred in a good way. Choosing to go to see the mausoleum as the first stop on Sunday morning when I was the only one there was an unexpected gift. The solitude of being in there alone on a day of the week focused on introspection was very moving.












RIVERSIDE CHURCH

I hadn't put Riverside Church on my original itinerary. Mainly because it wasn't one of the buildings listed on the Open House New York chart of available venues but it was right across the street from the General Grant National Memorial. It was Sunday morning and the service was in full session when I crossed the street so I could only walk into the lobby.

The church was modeled after the thirteenth century Gothic Chartres Cathedral. It was like a trip back to medieval Europe. The church opened in 1930  with financial backing from John D. Rockefeller.

The church has an incredible history of advocacy for social issues with a speaker list including luminaries from around the world. Martin Luther King spoke here about his opposition to the Vietnam War. The church hosts a quarterly support forum for HIV support. Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Bill Clinton have all spoken there and Patti Smith and Yoko Ono have made performance appearances.
THE BEACON THEATER

The Beacon on Broadway and West 75th was considered to be the "older sister" of Radio City Music Hall. It opened in 1929 three years before Radio City. The theatrical impresario, "Roxy" Rosthafel was the man behind both theaters. The original intent of the theater was as a high-end performance venue where ordinary New Yorkers could go to see vaudeville acts, musical productions and entertainers at a ticket price most could afford.

But the interior was anything but cheap. Massive murals adorned the entry lobby with a reference to a bucolic ancient Greece. Gold, marble and stained glass encircled the entrance

As you proceeded to the auditorium you passed through more ornamentation dipped in gold leaf and gold paint. A magnificent chandelier lit by electric candles and crystal beads hangs overhead.

Once inside the theater becomes a trip around the world with Egyptian, Moroccan and Middle Eastern architectural details. There are murals of Eastern nomads with their caravans of camels and elephants.

Thirty-foot tall Greek Goddesses stand sentry on either side of the proscenium. A Moroccan inspired metal canopy thrusts out over the stage supported by huge iron spears.

The stage has held some of the most remembered performances in musical history. It's a New York and national landmark well worth its designation.
KINGS THEATRE

There were five Lowe's "Wonder Theatres”.So next I made my way up to the United Palace in Washington Heights. My last stop for the Open House New York event was another long subway ride out to Flatbush in Brooklyn to Kings Theatre on Flatbush Avenue. Built in the same era as the United Palace, Kings Theatre survived as best it could in a neighborhood that was falling into a steady decline. It was able to hold on until the late 70's when the doors were officially closed.

They remained closed for thirty-seven years until area citizen groups urged the city to look into restoration of the theatre. The area's decline had stopped and the community was now on a upward track. It took two borough presidents and $95 million dollars to restore the building to what it once was. And what it was was the most magnificent of the five "Wonder Theaters".

From the minute you walk in you're enveloped in a fantasy of grand scale. A vaulted coffered ceiling reproduced in minute detail hangs over a grand staircase

The multi-leveled entrances into the auditorium each have their own perspective into the theater proper.

Once inside its like walking into a Faberge egg. It's a jewel box encrusted in a renovation one could hardly imagine looking at the deterioration the theater had suffered through vandalism and natural causes.

The remarkable proscenium sits up front with royal beauty crowned with its own jeweled and decorated tiara

The amazing plaster work recreated on the ceiling from molds taken from the various partial pieces that still existed is an architectural miracle. Colors were developed from old photographs and the most minuet flakes that could be found on a handful of remaining pieces.

The Kings Theatre reopened in 2015 and now functions as a performance center for a revitalized neighborhood. If it hadn't been for Open House New York I don't know if I would have found out about Kings Theatre but now that I know I'm on the list for future events and you can bet I'll be there.













THE GALLERY

Woolworth Building Aglow From Municipal Building, 1916
Edwin Levick, photographer
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