Late afternoon sun filters through yellow-green corn stalks and casts a shadowed pattern across Sarah Meagher’s face as she turns to survey the trails she blazed to create the labyrinths for her corn maze.

Meagher, 16, has spent the past month and a half shaping the corn fields of Whidbey Island’s Dugualla Bay Farms into a corn maze, in order to ready them for the farm’s annual harvest-time rush.

Dugualla Bay Farms, which has stood for 20 years as a part of the island’s scenic and sensory experience, is owned by Bob Hulbert. Each fall, the farm offers a variety of harvest and Halloween attractions, such as hay-rides, self pick pumpkin patches, harvest themed birthday parties, seasonal fruits and vegetables and the corn maze.

Shari Meagher, Sarah’s mother and fellow employee, said the corn maze is in its fifth year as a farm attraction. She said Sarah and her friends have created them the past few years.

“They’ve been doing the corn mazes for awhile,” she said. “Maybe three years.”

She said this year, however, the girls had a little trouble because they started late in the season, after the corn had already grown past its tender stage. This caused them to have to work a lot harder to shape the maze and cut back the stubble and stalks.

Sarah walks into the produce stand and waits for her mother to finish talking, before asking her where she can dump some corn stalks. Her mother looks her over and in that motherly “let me lick my thumb and rub that off” tone, she brings smudges on Sarah’s face to her attention.

“I’ve been working on the farm,” Sarah said, as a retort and explanation, with a smile of humor at the situation.

Sarah said she started working on the corn maze about the second week in August.

“But this week, I’ve really been hammering on it,” she said. “We’ve had to hoe it out first, then get a lawn mower in there and now we’re using a small tractor.”

Even with all this work, however, Sarah said they still have a great deal to do before the maze is opened to the public this weekend. They have to cut down overhanging stalks and leaves, mow left over stubble and stumps on the trails, and lay out dry stalks on the paths to protect visitors from mud and spills.

As Sarah shows off her work, she tells a little about her personal thoughts on the maze.

“Basically, this one goes straight down,” she said, pointing down a shaded path that gets lost in itself and the color of greens and yellows. “My favorite part is the circles because they interloop and you get all confused.”

She said when she and her friend, Shayla Schindler, 17, were marking the trails with spray paint and starting to cut them, they got disoriented and turned around a few times. She said her mom told her to pick a row and walk toward the sound of Highway 20, which runs right in front of the farm.

Schindler, who helped Sarah, said she enjoyed the work, but that it definitely had some downfalls, such as thoughts of running into spiders, knowing she was coming out every day with hundreds of tiny leaf cuts (similar to hundreds of paper cuts) up and down her arms, and acquiring a few other aches and pains.

“It was hard beginning,” she said. “At first we were just doing it with shovels and hoes, so we got some hardcore blisters.”

Spiders, cuts, blisters and all, however, she said she is glad they got the job done, because for a while there she said it didn’t look like the farm would have a corn maze this fall.

“I wouldn’t mind doing it again, as long as we got some tractors and didn’t have to use hoes,” she said, when asked if she would ever repeat the task.

Schindler smiles and looks in the direction of the corn fields, where she and Sarah have put in a little less than 100 hours of work time.

“It’s a lot of work, but I’m glad we got it done,” she said. “Maybe I’ll bring my parents.”

Besides Schindler, the Whidbey Island Girl’s Fast Pitch softball team also came out to help Sarah get her maze ready.

Sarah’s advice on corn maze creating would be to start early. She holds her hand up to about knee hight and motions that this is the ideal time to start forming a design in the corn.

“You need to get your design out and cut it … It makes it a whole lot easier,” she said.

To Sarah, the corn maze was a project and an experience in work, determination, how to improvise, and fun. Now that the harvest season is here, she said she hopes the community and visitors come and put her maze to good use.

“Just go out and walk through it. If you like it, thats cool, because that’s why it’s built. We built it for families to come out and have fun,” She said.

Dugualla Bay Farm’s corn maze is opened the first weekend in October and goes until Oct. 31. Hours are noon to 4 p.m. every day. The farm might even have haunted night tours for ages 12 and up, but dates are not yet set.