DYERSVILLE, Iowa — A 140-acre cornfield in Iowa gets some special attention.
"We try and garden it, we try and baby it, and be out here in the best conditions and doing the best we possibly can," said Iowa farmer Andy Rahe.
He and his brother Adam are in charge of the corn that grows just beyond the outfield at the Field of Dreams. They spent last week harvesting it.
"It's actually been a pretty good harvest," Andy said. "We have an amazing crop and we're very blessed for having that."
The Rahe brothers have farmed the cornfield for years, but seeing their corn used as the backdrop for the first Major League Baseball game ever played in Iowa, made this year extra special.
"I think every farmer has that field that you know is right along the highway, everybody sees it," Andy said. "Well, this is not right along the highway but everybody sees it, so that's pretty special to us."
"It's pretty cool to work with probably the most famous corn in the world right now," Adam Rahe said. "It's definitely a big responsibility, and we do not take it lightly. I'm very fortunate to have the opportunity to work and farm the ground around here."
Andy remembers growing up in the area and watching the Field of Dreams movie being filmed. Now, he lives right up the road and sees the field light up at night as people from all over the country visit for a chance to play ball on the storied field.
"You definitely have the pressure then you want it to look good and you want it to be perfect," Andy said. "I feel like this year it did look great for the game, so I was very proud of that, we both were. It was an amazing game. It was amazing to be there and see all the players come out of the corn, and that was, it was pretty special."
"It was pretty cool to look out and look all the spots that we had planted, or the spots that we walked in left field, we walked each row and put down plant food," Adam said. "Definite work paid off."
Some extra work was put in this year to make sure the cornfields looked good for the MLB game, especially when two days before the White Sox and Yankees game, a thunderstorm had flattened some of the corn.
"I woke up in the middle of the night and I just had a bad feeling," Andy said. "It took some of the corn down and we had to go and fix it, so we got little round posts and split it up and zip tied it up and made it look like you couldn't even tell."
Before they could drive the combine and begin this year's harvest, the brothers had to comb through the field to make sure none of those stakes were still in the ground.
"We double checked and triple checked to make sure we didn't run something through the combine," Andy said.
While the Rahe brothers were busy harvesting beyond the outfield, the Field of Dreams movie site was still crowded with visitors from all over the country, traveling for a chance to play on the famous field.
The Blazier family was visiting from Fishers, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis. Three generations, from grandpa John to dad Shawn and son Conrad Blazier.
"This has been a lifelong dream actually, for us," Shawn said.
"I played little league baseball in 1961 is when I first started," John said. "I'm 71 today and still love baseball, and we love the movie. And so my family is carrying on the tradition."
They added that they visited on the perfect day, because had they come one day later, the corn would've been gone.
"That's lucky for us," Shawn said. "That was a big part of why we actually came out here. We had to walk into the corn just like everybody else."
"It's tall and it's green," Conrad said. "It's just exciting to walk into. You have the vibes of baseball in it."
The harvest yields around 31,000 bushels of corn, according to Andy. However, at least one ear of corn will be missing, instead at its new home in Indiana.
"We're taking some corn with us home, I hope that's okay, but great souvenirs for us," John said. "We'll just store it. Probably put a tag on it and say it was from the Field of Dreams and put today's date on it and have a wonderful memory."
Now that the Field of Dreams cornfield has been harvested, the corn will be used for ethanol and cattle feed, and the Rahe brothers will replant it next May.