'Agri-Tainment' Blooms Into a Corny New Source of Revenue
Glenn Boyette used to be afraid he'd lose his family farm. Now he's busy making money by making other people scared. (More after the break)
Over the past four years, Mr. Boyette has built three haunted houses and four other Halloween attractions on his 150-acre farm in Clayton, N.C. That has left just 40 acres for harvesting hay, sweet corn and watermelon—crops that, along with tomatoes, used to claim the entire land."We raised livestock and produce for many years and it just got tighter and tighter," says Mr. Boyette, 58, who took over the farm from an uncle in the late 1980s and over time saw profits dry up.From the months of September to January, he says, about 35,000 visitors drop by to experience the haunted houses, 3-D adventure, spinning vortex, haunted trail, corn maze and a Christmas light show. Tickets cost between $7 and $25. Revenues, says Mr. Boyette, have doubled since the shift away from farming."People love to be entertained more than they love to eat," he says.Looking to diversify their sources of income, small farmers are expanding their "agritourism" or "agri-tainment" operations beyond the traditional pumpkin-picking, hayride and petting zoo.They're erecting haunted mansions, dizzying corn mazes and other elaborate attractions on their properties. In some cases, they convert them into holiday spectacles and other themed exhibits to keep visitors coming for a longer season."We realized this was going to save our farm," says Randy Bates, who turned his Gradyville, Pa., family farm into a more than $1 million annual business from one that only grossed roughly $50,000 a year.Clayton Fear Farm proprietor Glenn Boyette now uses most of the 150-acre farm for Halloween and other exhibits.Sales began booming in the late 1990s, soon after he added the Bates Motel, a haunted-house attraction, to the 82-acre property, plus a haunted hayride and corn maze. Now instead of working a second job on top of farming to make ends meet, Mr. Bates runs Agritainment Inc. full time all year round.He says some of the more than 60,000 guests who visit his farm every year aren't fooled when the last room of the Bates Motel becomes Santa's workshop in November."Kids have said to their parents, 'I'm not going in there. It's scary,'" says Mr. Bates. Scott Skelly designs and cuts corn mazes for farmers like himself, charging on average between $2,000 and $5,000 per labyrinth. The larger the field —and the harder for humans to navigate it—the higher the price. The 22-year-old started his job as a hobby when he was just nine years old. That led him to self-publish a book on the subject in 2004 while a high-school sophomore called "Corn Mazes: Is There a Pot of Gold in Your Corn Field?" This year, Mr. Skelly designed 20 mazes, double the number in 2009. He says the increase reflects the hard times that have fallen on many small farms, including his own family's 220-acre ranch in Janesville, Wis.
While prices for major commodities such as corn and soybeans have climbed of late, small family farms have struggled in recent decades. Only 45% of the 2.2 million farms nationwide show positive net cash income from farming, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2007 census report, its most recent. The rest need to supplement their revenue with other sources to cover their expenses. Prices for milk, corn and other farm commodities "depend on supply and demand, and so farmers can't necessarily get a high enough price," says Mr. Skelly. "With agritourism, farmers have the opportunity to name their own prices and make a lot more money." The Haunted House Association, a two-year-old national trade group, estimates there are more than 500 farms in the U.S. that feature Halloween attractions. That's a hair-raising statistic for some farmers' neighbors, who must put up with piercing screams, buzzing chainsaws and flashing lights throughout the month of October or longer. Conestoga, Pa., a rural township with 3,800 residents, added its first noise ordinance soon after Bob Hershey set aside more than half of his family's 46-acre farm in 1986 for a haunted hayride. Mr. Hershey, who's added several attractions, including a 3-D pirate ghost ship, says he receives about 15,000 thrill-seeking visitors at his property every fall. Many farmers say they recruit family members and friends to spook visitors by dressing up as knife-wielding zombies, killer clowns and movie villains like Freddy Krueger. Sabrina Kent Doolan says she pays a friend to ride around her Jamestown, Ind., farm as a headless horseman on weekends leading up to Halloween. "It actually started out as a horse farm, and it just wasn't cutting it," says Ms. Doolan of her 170-acre property. "We were doing a whole lot of work for not nearly enough money." In 1999, she decided to give haunted hayrides a try and later transformed a barn into a haunted house. "My dad thought I had gone nuts," says Ms. Doolan, who also hires local schoolchildren for ghoulish role-playing. "It just took off like wildfire. It's grown every year." Farmers have a natural advantage over big-city haunts in scaring patrons, thanks to the popularity of horror movies set in remote areas like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," says Brady Armour, co-owner of Unit 70 Studios, a Columbus, Ohio, monster maker. Some of his best sellers are farm-related props such as animated demonic scarecrows, pumpkin-faced ghouls and "Pigzillas"—giant pig heads that shoot out of a box, spray water and thrash around. All items are handmade and cost more than $400 each. An animated, 10-foot-tall grim reaper retails for $5,100. Mr. Armour says he's seeing more orders from farmers in recent years for all sorts of props, including dummies of phantom pirates, rotting corpses and mad scientists. "Farming in general can be a scary business," he says. Adding haunted and other attractions "is a way for farmers to meet their fears head on."
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