ITHACA, N.Y. -- Corn in all its forms will be celebrated Sunday, Sept. 28, from 1 to 4 p.m. when Cornell Plantations stages the first Judy's Day with educational and fun-filled activities for kids and their families.

The festival, "Corn, the A-Maize-ing Grain," is open to the public free of charge, rain or shine. Activities are planned for Emerson Garden, the historically named "Corn Hollow" area near Plantations headquarters where Barbara McClintock's Nobel Prize-winning research was conducted and where teaching about corn continues today.

Participants in Judy's Day can visit a corn zoo, determine what's corny and what's not and get lost in a maze of maize. Demonstrations and activities include husking, shelling and grinding corn; designing corn crafts; and learning about Huitlacoche, corn smut.

Planned as an annual event, the festival is made possible by the friends and family of the late Judy Abrams, whose volunteer work for numerous organizations included sewing sleeping bags for the homeless, teaching English as a second language and being a sponsor of Cornell Plantations.

Among the Cornell departments represented at the festival will be Plant Pathology; Plant Breeding; Soil, Crop and Atmospheric Sciences; Fruit and Vegetable Science; Bailey Hortorium; and Cornell Cooperative Extension. The DeWitt Historical Society will have an exhibit on corn-growing in Tompkins County in the early 1900s, using old tools and machines. Kids will be able to get elbow-deep in corn starch in what Dr. Seuss would have called an "oobleck" tub, provided by the Sciencenter.

Free parking is available in the Peterson Lot, at the corner of Judd Falls and Tower roads, with horse-drawn wagon rides to the festival. More information on the corn festival and other programs of Cornell Plantations, the university's museum of living plants, is available at (607) 255-3020.