Best Corn Maze in the Catskills?
My kids are obsessed with corn mazes. If you have a favorite corn maze in the Catskills or Hudson Valley, please tell me about it in the comments because we will be visiting them all next fall! I’d espcially love to hear your reviews of Stanton's Feura Farm in Feura Bush, Samascott Orchards in Kinderhook, Kesicke Farm in Rhinebeck, and any others that you love. We visited our local spot, Hull-O Farms, this year and it was perfect.
This particular corn maze starts out as more of a “corn trail” — that is, there was only one path for the first half, and you didn’t have to make any decisions about which way to turn. However, it got a little more complicated halfway through, and my children were thrilled to be lost among the corn.
Is it cheating to put your kid on your shoulders so that you point yourselves toward the exit? I’m gonna go ahead and say that there are no rules at Hull-O Farms.
Children of the Corn Maze
The 300-acre Hull-O Farms has been in business for 7 generations and over 200 years. They sell their own meat and host family farm stays. It’s worth noting that there’s a lot of realness on this farm. Like, when a pregnant woman said she’d rather walk than get bounced around on the hayride, the farmer told her that his sister was loading bales of hay up until the day she went into labor and lamented that people just aren’t as tough as they used to be. (Yikes!) And before the hayride began, the farmer asked where we were from (Brooklyn!) and then proceeded to give a long speech from his seat in the tractor, talking about how he wishes upstate New York would secede and no longer be connected to New York City.
So, they’re not gonna sugarcoat things here. But you can still take selfies on the hayride.
We just came for the hayride and corn maze, but we talked to a family who was staying for the weekend, and they were raving about the food, and racing through the fields, and seemed utterly filled with joy. But if you’re looking for more of a farm-lite weekend, you might want to look into Honey Hollow Farm Stay, which is a run by a part-time farmer who also works part-time in the city teaching literacy to immigrant adults.
Best place to see fall foliage in the Catskill Mountains
If you’re just looking for the best place to see the changing leaves, the view from the Hull-O Farms hayride was absolutely breathtaking. It’s hard to capture the majesty of the Catskill Mountains robed in fall foliage, but you can click on the photo above to fill your computer screen with autumnal glory.
After the ride, the farmers were selling pumpkins, apple cider by the glass, and cups of animal feed for the goats. And this guy totally winked at me.
Hull-O Farms is located at 10 Cochrane Road, Durham, NY; (518) 239-6950.
