What's the modern version of a needle in a haystack? Try a lost ring in a corn pit

With some nice fall weather, you might be tempted to visit a local corn pit attraction. If so, Jess Tran has some advice: Don't wear any valuable jewelry.

Tran spent some time playing in the corn pit at Waldoch Farm in Lino Lakes, when she was visiting the corn maze and pumpkin patch with her husband and their three young sons earlier this month.

The family was packing up to go home when Tran noticed her diamond wedding ring was missing. She realized it must have fallen off in the corn pit and was now buried among millions of corn kernels.

It turns out this happens all the time.

A needle in a haystack is just a saying. But a wedding ring lost in the corn pit is a common calamity at this time of year. The hard corn kernels are coated with a cornstarch dust that can make your hands slippery.

That's why local corn pits typically post signs telling people not to wear jewelry while playing in them.

Were there warning signs at Waldoch Farm?

"There sure was," Tran said. But she said she missed them because she was trying to keep an eye on her sons.

In addition to warning signs, Twin Cities Harvest Festival and Maze in Brooklyn Park typically has metal detectors on hand to help guests find rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, keys and cellphones that get swallowed up by the corn.

"People are losing stuff nonstop," said Bear Bouwman, whose family owns and operates the Twin Cities Maze.

"Everything falls off," said Darrin Gray, a longtime metal detectorist from Waconia who is frequently called to the corn pit at the Sever's Fall Festival attraction in Shakopee to find missing objects.

Gray is part of an online network of metal detector hobbyists called the Ring Finders who offer to find missing items, usually in exchange for gas money and a voluntary reward.

"I'm kind of a staple there. I've been doing it for years," Gray said of his lost-and-found work at Sever's.

Bouwman said when something sinks into a corn pit, it's a little like dropping something in a lake.

"All the corn looks the same," he said.

Both Bouwman and Gray said if you lose something in a corn pit, you should ask employees for help. If you randomly start digging, you could end up burying your missing valuable even deeper.

In Tran's case, when her ring didn't turn up after a week, her husband, Minh, rented a metal detector and got permission to search the Waldoch Farm corn pit early one morning before it opened.

At first, the metal detector just beeped on some coins, someone's earring and the metal hardware used to build the pit.

"We didn't know if we were doing it right," Tran said. "We weren't feeling very hopeful."

Then Minh adjusted the metal detector so it would be less sensitive. It beeped on something in the middle of the pit. Tran dug deep into the corn and caught a flash of something shiny. It was her ring.

"My heart just started pounding," she said. "I started screaming and crying. I felt like I was being proposed to all over again. I was so happy."