Location (nearest town or landmark): Schomberg, Ontario

View from a distance; formation is difficult to see from the ground due to the tall sorghum plants © Joanna Emery (CCCRN Ontario)

Date First Reported or Discovered: August 17 or 18, 2006

Description: ringed circle with eight connecting spokes

Crop / Vegetation: sorghum (about 6 feet tall; first known Canadian formation in this crop)

Size: approximately 26 metres (87 feet) diameter

Farmer (confidential as requested): Frazier Mohawk

Investigation: CCCRN Ontario

Notes:

First seen by hayriders. On side of small hill. Spokes aligned to compass directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW). No tracks or pathways seen initially. Some plant roots pulled out of the ground. Some stalks bent, others broken. Some single standing stalks of sorghum and weeds. Very dry soil. Stretched and bent stalk nodes. Small dust devils seen by farmer around time that formation was first found. Two cell phones and one camera of some CCCRN Ontario team members would not work properly up to about 100 feet outside of formation. "Lights" reported in area at about 1:30 am earlier that week.

Video segment on A-Channel News. Photo gallery on King Township web site.

Farm is a "family farm" with hayrides, etc. so cautious skepticism in this regard.

Schomberg Crop Circle 2006   August 20, 2006 By Joanna Emery Ontario contact Canadian Crop Circle Research Network  The first Ontario crop circle for 2006 is a medicine-wheel formation in sorghum, a tall, grassy crop that looks and grows similar to corn (maize). Sorghum is the world’s fifth most important cereal crop and used widely in Africa and Asia (http://darwin.nmsu.edu/~molbio/plant/sorghum.html), but this is the first Canadian formation I know of in sorghum.  The area, Schomberg, however, has had randomly-downed reports before and other formations have been reported in previous years within that or neighbouring townships. Driving home a thought struck me.  Could this formation – less than an hour’s drive from Toronto - have anything correlation between medicine, Africa, and a major international AIDS conference that city hosted (around the time this crop circle may have been made)?  The conference received a huge amount of press in Canadian newspapers,  in part because of Conservative Prime Minister Harper’s refusal to even briefly attend the conference or make any AIDS funding announcements during that week, saying it was ‘not the right time’. I admit, when reports of a formation on Puck’s Farm – a large family farm that hosts hayrides, corn mazes, and petting animals for children (www.pucksfarm.com)  – arrived, I was extremely sceptical.  It had the earmarks of a great publicity stunt.  Interestingly, the name ‘Puck’ is that of a mischievous sprite although it’s unclear if that was behind the name of this long-running farm. The formation was first noticed either Thursday night (Aug.17) or Friday  (Aug.18), by hayriders (there are daily hayrides in the area), and the farmer only found out the next day when asked by other workers what he thought of it (Friday night or Sat).  He was curious to find out what caused it and called the media Saturday morning to ask who he could talk to about it.  The media contacted CCCRN and we went out Sunday morning (Aug.20). When asked if a lot of people had visited it, the farmer said no.  No strange reports noted around the time the formation may have been formed (although he did say a skunk went into their house Thursday and stunk up but I’m not sure if that had anything to do with this!), yet when asked if anyone had seen strange lights, the farmer recalled a lady mentioning sometime that week that she had seen lights in the area at 1:30am or so and thought it might have been a helicopter.  The farmer said that there had been dust devils – unusual high/fast whirlwinds – in the farm parking lot (about ¼ mile from the crop circle) noted for about five minutes on the Thursday or Friday. The formation is on the side of a small hill, with no pathways into it (except the one already made by visitors).  It’s hard to make out the shape because the sorghum is about 2 metres tall.  The formation consists of a counter clockwise circle about 21 ft in diameter, with 8 ‘spokes’ of laid crop (about 15 ft each long), radiating out to a large outer ring (about 4 ft in width) of flattened crop flowing in a counter clockwise direction. The whole formation is roughly 60 ft in diameter.  Curiously, each ‘spoke’ points to a compass direction – North, South, East, West, NE, NW, SE, SW. The crop is laced with alfalfa or hay and some weeds, in fact, the farmer said he planted the sorghum merely to keep the weeds down and this was its first year.  Some of the weeds were unaffected (not laid down) in the flow, others were down but I noticed the tops, particularly the milkweed heads, were uncrushed.  The centre was very flattened and consisted mostly hay/grass that was swirled; a few noticeable single stalks of weed and sorghum.  I also found a fist-sized rock near the centre and a few hard, large soil clumps.  The soil overall seemed very dry.  The lay on the southern outer perimeter side (going downhill) seemed to have more sorghum than the opposite side and a much ‘flatter’ look.  The sorghum isn’t planted in rows, like corn, but rather all over the place and may have been more densely planted in this area.  The stalks themselves can be very brittle although when younger they were more bendable.  Like corn, some stalks were broken at the base, others seemed ‘pulled’ up by the root but without a break, and some just bent at the base.  We did find some bent nodes in the inner circle part, at least one ‘charred’ area, and a number of stretched nodes.  Taking measurements, there does seem to be a nodal change as compared to stalks from far outside the formation.  Overall, sorghum, like corn, is very ‘messy’ looking but I’ve never seen a sorghum crop circle before so it’s hard to judge.  Was this crop circle a publicity stunt?  I don’t know…the farmer at least seemed believable and genuinely perplexed (he said he didn’t think his farmhands were smart enough to lay the ‘spokes’ out in such a compass-orientated direction!).  Most people I talked to at the farm seemed to think the crop circle was cool and the kids waved from the hayride as we investigated it.  It was great to see people visiting the farm have so much fun with this event - whatever their thoughts - and a very objective, unbiased clip was on the local news show that night will undoubtedly bring more visitors with more viewpoints.  In all, this investigation was an enjoyable one, irregardless of whether or not this crop circle is real or hoaxed, although I admit those very observable nodal changes left me scratching my head…