Article content

Jennifer Van Boekel lived in fear. Her boys, Greg and Jacob, were getting older, throwing and hitting baseballs on the small patch of lawn in front of their farmhouse — and putting her windows at risk. Jennifer’s husband, Mike, proposed a solution, one that has shaped the family’s lives ever since: why not plough under an acre of corn and turn it into a baseball field, just like in the movie Field of Dreams?

“Some people thought I was crazy,” Mike says.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Real-life Field of Dreams: Kids come from miles around to play baseball in the middle of an Ontario corn field Back to video

The Van Boekels are chicken farmers. But, on a patch of land west of Bright, Ont., what they are most famous for is baseball. Kids come from miles around to play on the field, which has an outfield fence, a backstop, chalk baselines and bases. The bases showed up on the front porch one morning, left there by a stranger.

There has been talk of erecting some lights, although Jennifer frets that a lit field would mean games wouldn’t end at sundown, as they do now, but continue on into the night.

There is a rhythm to farming, and a rhythm, too, to baseball. Farming is a game of patience. Nothing happens, but then things bloom. At the field, nothing happens, but then the boys get home from school and their friends appear and a ball sails over the fence and into the corn beyond — a home run. The hitter is responsible for finding the lost ball. Many stay lost until the Fall harvest, when a combine ploughs the corn, yielding a fresh crop of mud-caked spheres that the Van Boekels dry out so that they are ready for the next season.