A three-acre corn maze shaped like Dolly Parton's likeness now stands about seven feet tall on Josh Sickinger's farm in Lowell, Indiana, the result of four months of work by Sickinger and his staff at Harvest Tyme Family Farm. The maze opens Saturday as part of the farm's fall festival, timed just weeks after Parton's death in late August at age 80.
Harvest Tyme joined the “Get Lost with Dolly” campaign, one of 20 farms across 15 states and two Canadian provinces participating in a coordinated tribute this fall, according to the Chicago Tribune. The national initiative was designed by Utah-based The MAiZE Inc., founded by Brett Herbst, which has produced an annual country-music-themed maze campaign in recent years, according to the Associated Press. Participating farms donate a portion of ticket sales to Parton's Imagination Library, per the Tribune's reporting.
The campaign's honorees have shifted year to year — Reba McEntire in 2023, Luke Bryan in 2024, and Lainey Wilson in 2025 — before this year's mazes were built around Parton, per the same Associated Press account. Harvest Tyme has its own history of themed mazes, having previously created Charlie Brown, Sesame Street, Reba McEntire and Wizard of Oz-inspired designs, according to the Tribune.
Four Months in the Making
Sickinger and his team began the growing process during Memorial Day weekend, planting corn in a north-south and east-west grid before using a computerized grid to determine which stalks to remove, the Tribune reports. The resulting maze, roughly seven feet tall, was designed and cut before Parton's death turned the project into something closer to a memorial. In a statement provided to campaign organizers before she died, Parton had invited fans to “get lost in this year's country music corn maze for a little fun, laughter and a real good reason to get lost,” according to FOX 5 Atlanta.
“It was heartbreaking,” Sickinger told the Tribune of Parton's death. He added that her impact reached well beyond country music. The Harvest Tyme Fall Festival opens Saturday and runs through October 25, operating select hours on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at 17904 Grant Street in Lowell. Beyond the maze, the festival features a petting zoo, pumpkin glow walk, playgrounds, kiddie rides, hayrides and games, plus roughly 10 new photo opportunities including giant 3-D art sets developed over six months, with fiberglass installations rented through Imagination Time Events. Dinosaur installations from the farm have also traveled to Long Island, New York, and Texas, per the Tribune.
A Program Born From a Father Who Couldn't Read
Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995 in Sevier County, Tennessee, inspired by her father's inability to read or write, according to WIOV. The program mails a free book each month to registered children from birth through age five, and has grown into a global effort. Globally, the Imagination Library now mails more than 3 million books monthly across five countries — the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Republic of Ireland — according to WIBC. The Tribune reports the program has distributed more than 300 million books worldwide since its founding.
Parton grew up in a two-room cabin in East Tennessee, one of 12 brothers and sisters born to parents who worked as sharecroppers before buying a small farm, the Tribune notes. She went on to release more than 200 singles and 79 albums, author eight books, and raise funds for causes including dropout reduction, college scholarships, medical research, disaster relief, wildlife conservation and music education. Bryan Seaver, quoted in the Tribune's report, said Parton remained connected to her farming roots throughout her career.
Indiana's Funding Gap Adds Urgency
The Lowell fundraiser carries added weight in Indiana, where the state eliminated its 50 percent funding match for local Imagination Library affiliates in the 2025 biennial budget, a cut the Tribune reports amounted to about $6 million over two years. Former Governor Eric Holcomb had established that match by allocating $6 million in the 2023 state budget specifically to help expand the program statewide, according to WFYI.
First Lady Maureen Braun led a private fundraising drive to help fill the gap, and by April she had reached 90 percent of her fundraising goal through private donors, per the Tribune. The program now reaches all 92 Indiana counties, but that geographic milestone masks a participation gap: state literacy data showed only about 37 percent of eligible Hoosier children under five, roughly 152,000 kids, were actually enrolled to receive books as of April, according to Chalkbeat.
Local library leaders in Indiana say a widespread public misconception — that Parton personally or state government funding fully covers the cost of the books — has made it harder for community chapters to raise the local half of the match needed to sustain deliveries, according to InkFreeNews. Statewide, more than 8.9 million books have been delivered to Hoosier children since the program launched in Indiana in 2006, per the Imagination Library of Indiana. Events like Harvest Tyme's maze are part of the local fundraising effort meant to close that remaining gap, one cornfield tribute at a time.
