And we’ve got a winner for the strangest class award. Washington State University alum Bob Ricci now teaches courses to other farmers on how to design corn mazes. His business, Bob’s Corn, conducts corn maze tours and courses in Snohomish County, which he considers to be a more profitable venture than farming food. Corn mazes have apparently become so popular that many farmers hire professional corn maze designers, who may charge $10,000.

Ricci first learned of corn mazes while a senior at Washington State in 1995. After reading about one shaped like a train on a Pennsylvania farm, Ricci decided to attempt to build his own. His initial efforts were pretty pathetic, so he did not try again until a farmer named Ben Krause inspired him with a maze shaped like the state of Washington. With just $375 and the dream of a maze made of maize, Ricci attended a corn maze seminar in Wisconsin. The rest is history.

Ricci has expressed a need to maintain the integrity of his mazes. Though he knows that he could earn more money by adding rides, building small cottages, and hiring people to “haunt” the mazes in costumes, he is staunch in his desire to keep the mazes as unadulterated as possible. He told the HeraldNet today:

“It becomes an ethical balance. I want people to have an authentic farm experience. There’s definitely a commercial line I don’t want to cross… I like it when people from Seattle or Bellevue come out here. Put them in the maze and all they see is blue skies and corn. It’s escapism. I want that authentic farm experience for them.”

This “authentic experience” is a bit creepy a la Signs, the Mel Gibson movie, but hell, there are worse things to do in Washington. Like get food poisoning or break your leg or get food poisoning and break your leg while in a corn maze. But I gotta give it to those corn guys, the mazes do look pretty cool aerially.