Southern Hill Farms creates a-maze-ing corn maze

“If you build it, they will come.”

That’s exactly what Lisa and David Hill, the owners of Southern Hill Farms, did. 

The high-school sweethearts heard there was a demand for a corn maze, and they delivered. 

Five years ago, Southern Hill Farms had its first corn maze in the shape of angel wings. 

Every year since, people go to the farm’s Fall Festival to see if they can find their way through the maze, and with each year that passes, the pressure mounts to come up with a new design that will engage guests. 

Lisa and David Hill think they knocked the theme out of the park this year, scoring big with their family and the farm guests. 

In honor of the Fall Festival’s 10th anniversary and in homage to David Hill’s baseball history, the farm created a “Field of Dreams” themed corn maze, featuring a baseball player, baseball diamond, sunflower with a 10 in the center and “SHF Field of Dreams” written out. 

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Living his own field of dreams

Besides his family and friends, David Hill’s two other loves in his life are farming, specifically corn, and baseball. 

He spent the first part of his life playing the American pastime. Like many others, he started in little league, went on to play for his school’s team at Lake Brantley High School and even walked on at Western Carolina University. 

He was at tryouts for two weeks, but he decided to take a step back to focus on his forestry major, which was intense and required dedication to his studies. He missed a week of tryouts. 

That is, until he ran into the baseball coach at the gym, and the coach told him to be out on the field that day. Turns out David Hill made the team on the last day of tryouts before cuts. 

Looking back on it, David Hill said his decision to go back to the field was worth it.

“When you play college sports, that’s kind of your life now,” he said. “I studied a lot, worked hard, but you devote yourself to it. It’s four years, and there’s no promises after that, so I wasn’t counting on anything after that. I got to taste a little bit of it.”

David Hill took his baseball career a step further when he signed as a second baseman with the Seattle Mariners’ minor league team, the Wausau Timbers, in Wausau, Wisconsin. The Timbers were members of the Class A Midwest League from 1975 to 1990. 

David Hill recalled bunking with a teammate and borrowing a bike to ride around town to find housing. 

His first time up to bat was against Al Jones, who later was called up to the Milwaukee Brewers. He hit a double down the third base line. He didn’t realize how cool it was to have the experience at the time because to him, he simply was playing a sport he loved. 

“I remember thinking when I was up there, ‘I need to stop and enjoy this,’ but you never know what you’re doing while you’re doing it, how special it is, until you’re done,” David Hill said. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I got the shot, and I took it.”

His baseball career in the minors was short-lived. He played one year before moving back to Florida with his new bride, Lisa Hill.

David Hill went on to coach his sons’ little league and high school teams, keeping the passion for baseball alive. 

He always loved watching “Field of Dreams,” as it reminded him of his father who taught him how to play the sport, his days on the diamond and the life he was leading working on the farm owned by Lisa Hill’s father and later on Southern Hill Farms when Lisa and David Hill bought the land and started the farm in 1999. 

“David’s favorite movie is ‘Field of Dreams,’ I think that’s all (my kids) remember about their father and movies,” Lisa Hill said with a laugh. 

Knowing the impact baseball has had on their lives and her husband’s love for the classic baseball movie, Lisa Hill immediately thought the maze should become a field of dreams, literally and figuratively. 

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Simpler than you think

Coming up with the designs are entertaining for Lisa Hill and Olivia Clark, the farms’ communications and marketing manager. David Hill focuses more on growing the field corn to bring his wife and Clark’s vision to life.

While on a trip to Tennessee five years ago, she came across a mural of angel wings, which inspired Lisa Hill to think how a corn maze could be reimagined to look like angel wings. She went home and made the idea a reality. 

David Hill said he was hesitant to make a corn maze as he was unsure why people would want to try to escape a field of corn for fun, but he went with it. Now, some people have made the Southern Hill Farms Fall Festival an annual tradition because of the corn maze. 

“It’s not a real Fall Festival, unless you have a corn maze,” David Hill said.

After deciding the theme, Clark sits down with a designer to actually create the maze. They have to take into consideration the irrigation system in the field, so they make a grid that fits with all the irrigation pipes. 

Once approved, David Hill’s job comes into play. He and his team plant the corn in late July and about two weeks later, the farm has a company come out to flag the corn in quadrants in the field to match what’s on paper for the maze design. They use backpack sprayers to spray herbicide on where the maze will go. This kills the corn and leaves a pathway for David Hill to go back and mow so it could be flat for guests as they roam the corn field trying to find their way out. 

“(The process) is not as elaborate as you would think,” David Hill said. 

This year, Southern Hill Farms created an app, which includes the corn maze during the Fall Festival. For those who don’t want to get lost in the corn, they can download the app and have it guide them through the maze in real time. For those who still want a little mystery but also a handy-helper just in case, there is a fog setting on the map that will uncover the maze bit by bit. 

When creating the design, Lisa Hill said she has to find middle ground to make the corn maze challenging enough for the hardcore corn maze enthusiasts but not so challenging people will want to give up quickly and cut through the corn, destroying the maze. 

Even David Hill has found himself stuck in the maze while mowing it. A summertime storm would hit just as he was in the middle of the maze. Twice. 

“I was stuck; I couldn’t get out,” he said with a smile. “Nobody was going to come get me. I just sat there and faced away from the wind and the rain and just waited it out. It’s what it is. I came out soaking wet. Everybody laughed.”

For Lisa and David Hill, the corn maze and the Fall Festival at-large is about bringing families together to create memories. 

Lisa Hill said in the 10 years of the Fall Festival, she’s seen families take pictures at the farm and watched children grow up. 

“It’s almost like you can’t believe it’s real, that it’s been 10 years we’ve been doing this for the community, having this place for people to come and create their memories,” Lisa Hill said. “For (the maze) being so tied to us, to our past, I think it’s a very special time in our lives.”