Camp Fontanelle's Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze will be celebrating its eighth year of service to the local community. With regular hours from 1-7 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays beginning with the annual fall festival and barbecue the third Sunday in September through the first weekend in November. It operates largely through volunteer help. This annual fall tradition has become a great way to reach out to the local community. In 2013 over 6,500 people visited the pumpkin patch and maze and new, first time, summer campers sign up as a result of families visiting the maze. Information about summer camp is shared with guests. A hay rack-ride tour includes the lodge and pool along with an invitation to attend camp. Guests are also invited to sign up to be included on a newsletter list.
Families get to experience many activities such as bounce houses, a jumping pillow, laser tag, zip lines, petting barn, hay rack ride, tricycles, a cow train, pony rides, picking a pumpkin, the maze, a corn pit and other fun games such as ladder ball, ringmaster and stumps.
Concessions are also available. At the maze, guests are invited to think about how life is like a corn maze. A person travels the path of life and has to make decisions on which path to take. Free will enables us to make our choices. Some paths are dead ends and the only way to get out is to turn around and to make a different choice. Furthermore, God gives us a map to aid us in life through Jesus Christ and the Bible. We don't have to make the wrong choices and can avoid many of those dead ends in life if we choose to follow Christ obediently. Our pumpkin patch teaches another lesson in bearing fruit. In 2012 we had a drought with no rain from June 16 until August. Pumpkins were planted in early June and sprouted but remained largely dormant and some began to die from lack of water as we have no irrigation.
A two-inch rain was received in early August and those pumpkins shot out vines and made a huge bumper crop. It was a reminder that those droughts in life actually help us to produce more fruit if we stay rooted in Christ. When the rain comes, we will be ready to utilize the opportunity and be fruitful in our efforts through Christ. Summer camp season provides a great season of sowing seeds of faith. The fall pumpkin patch and corn maze season provides a great picture of how God can transform those seeds of faith into an abundant harvest.
For more information on how camping leads to fruitfulness, contact Sara Shaw, camping coordinator at sshaw@greatplainsumc.org.
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