From Haunted Graves to Merry Mayfield, the city of Mayfield, Kentucky is known for its townwide holiday celebrations, but the Dec. 10, 2021 tornado put those at risk.. After nearly a year, Mayfield residents were able to have a Halloween season filled with local festivities and can look forward to more community events during the holiday season.

Approaching a year after the tornado, a lot of Mayfield is still facing recovery, and so were holiday  activities.

Haunted Graves is a yearly month-long Halloween celebration in October that featured haunted houses, events celebrating Hispanic heritage and the A-Maize-ing Farms corn maze. 

Mayfield is home to A-Maize-ing Farms, which cultivates Kentucky’s largest corn maze yearly. What feels like wandering endless walls of corn stalks inside the maze is actually an aerial image of the downtown courthouse, which was damaged and torn down after the tornado, and the saying “Mayfield Strong.” 

The maze configurations often focus on social and political events. The 2021 maze recognized the 20 years since the Sept. 11 attacks and both the 2020 and 2016 mazes highlighted the elections.

 After being a part of the community for nearly 15 years, A-Maize-ing Farms co-owner Coye Elliott said they lost everything to the tornado.

“The tornado actually went down the center of the corn maze,” Elliot said. “We lost our concession stand and much of what we had in storage.”

Beyond the tornado carving out a path through the maze, debris was blown into the maze. For the farm, recovery began on Dec. 12, 2021. Elliott said a few buildings neighboring the field collapsed into the maze. 

“We had to rebuild from the ground up, electrical and everything,” Elliott said. “Now we have completely recovered, and we are on pace to have our best year yet.”

Although the tornado resulted in townwide damage, it also shined a light on Mayfield that wasn’t there before. People state and nationwide grew aware of what Mayfield was going through, as well as what they had to offer. 

“The help that we have received is support,” Elliott said. “People are coming to the maze, supporting us by paying admission. That’s going to help us recover. We didn’t have insurance on anything, so we had to do it out of our pocket. And so the support I’m talking about is just from the community coming to the maze.”

Stretching nearly 4 miles across, the maze is split into three sections: an expert, intermediate and beginner maze that all connect to each other. Maze-goers are given a map that has 20 checkpoints, where each checkpoint has a post with a hole puncher and a spot on the map for punching through to prove they made it to the checkpoint. 

Co-owner Sam Brown said people rarely complete the maze. 

“A small percentage of people ever finish the maze,” Brown said. “The people that do finish, we put them in a drawing for prizes, and we draw once a week.”

Elliott and Brown both grew up in Mayfield and decided to start working on the farm while they were in college.

“We just were childhood friends,” Brown said. ”Still best friends as adults, and just thought it was a good idea because there was nothing like it around. When we started it we were both in school, but we still just found a way to make it work. I’d drive home on the weekends from Alabama.”

What started as an idea is now a seasonal western Kentucky attraction. In regards to rebuilding, Brown believes the farm has been improved upon.

“We lost a lot in the tornado without a doubt, but we think we’ve made improvements to our facilities, and now we are running like normal,” Brown said. 

Besides receiving support from the community, A-Maize-ing Farms is also doing work to give that support back. Most recently, the farm hosted a fundraising night for the religious nonprofit Hope that Binds, which focuses on adoption and foster care.  

“We dedicate maybe a specific night of the week to them, to their following, and they can come out,” Brown said. “And part of the proceeds go to that nonprofit, to help them and their cause.” 

While Mayfield residents were able to experience the festiveness of fall in 2021, winter holidays were interrupted. 

Jennifer Walker, the executive director of the Mayfield Tourism Commission, is looking forward to what the holidays have to offer. 

“As we transition from Haunted Graves to November and December, what we call ‘Merry Mayfield,’ I think that this holiday season…is going to have maybe more meaning to our community, more significance to our community than maybe we have had in the past,” Walker said. 

Merry Mayfield features community activities throughout November and December. Residents can participate in the Turkey Trot, attend the Christmas Parade and marvel at the Festival of Lights. 

As a result of much of downtown Mayfield still going through physical recovery, many of the locations for events have been shifted. 

“None of us had a traditional Christmas last year,” Walker said. “Some of us were homeless. Some of us were without power. Some of us were without jobs. Some of us were without family members. Nobody in this community had a normal holiday season last year, and I think we are just going to treasure this year’s.”