🗞️ Storms flattened much of the Clodbuster corn maze, and it still plans to open Sept. 18

🗞️ Care for 1,000 high-risk pregnancies is leaving the county health department

🗞️ A free dental and health clinic comes to Gralin Street Friday

🗞️ Bishop volleyball is back to .500, and tennis plays at Civitan Park tonight

☀️ Sunny | High: 85°F | Low: 61°F

Tuesday picks up where Labor Day left off. Sunny, a high of 85, a light east wind around 6 miles an hour, and nothing in the forecast that qualifies as rain. Overnight goes back down to 61, so the cool mornings hold one more day. Then the warm-up: Wednesday is sunny and 87, Thursday climbs to 91, and by Friday afternoon showers and thunderstorms are back in the picture at 50 percent, with the same odds Saturday. If there is a porch dinner or an evening walk you have been meaning to get to, this is the week's best night for it.

Nineteen years of corn mazes, and this is the first one that had to be stood back up by hand.

Saturday's storms knocked down much of the six-acre maze at Zane's Clodbuster Farms, 5500 Leonard Farm Road, ten days before it was supposed to open. Owner Zane Sells told WFMY he is still aiming for Sept. 18, but he spent the weekend walking the rows trying to figure out how much of this year's design can be saved. “We probably will still open, but I'm not sure,” he said. “I think we'll be OK. Some of it is gonna stand back up, some of it is not, you know, some of it is gonna still be laid down.”

The plan from here is weed eaters, machetes and whatever else clears a path. Workers will cut out the flattened sections and reopen the trails around them, which means the maze that opens may be smaller than the one that was planted. The farm has close to $10,000 in this year's maze between the seed, the fertilizer and the labor of cutting the pattern, and the pattern is a USA 250 design for the country's semiquincentennial. That is not a theme you get to reuse next fall.

There is some good news in the corn itself. Sells said a fair amount of it had already started to recover by Sunday. “It's standing up a lot more than it was this morning,” he said. “The sun's helped pop some of it back up. It ain't gonna pop it all back up because some of it is just flat as a pancake.”

This was the same round of storms that left more than 13,000 Triad customers without power Saturday morning and put Asheboro under a state of emergency. In Kernersville, the corn maze is the only damage anyone has put a name on. Sells said the community response has already been encouraging, and that families keep telling him they are coming regardless. “Because it's been a tradition,” he said.

Last year the maze was $9, the hayride $9 and the combo $15, with kids under 3 free. Sells will post opening-day updates on the farm's Facebook page, and if you have been meaning to make a fall afternoon out of a hayride and a fire pit, this seems like the year to make a point of it.

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The programs are not going away. Who runs them is, and that turns out to be the part families notice.

Two care-management programs now run by the Forsyth County Department of Public Health, one for high-risk pregnancies and one for at-risk children, will move to the four prepaid Medicaid health plans when the current arrangement ends Dec. 31. Public Health Director Joshua Swift told FOX8 the county manages between 900 and 1,000 clients in the two programs at any given time. The pregnancy side helps patients with risks like preterm delivery, low birth weight and chronic conditions such as diabetes. The children's side covers kids who need extra health or social support.

“We have been the boots on the ground in the community,” Swift said. “Our clients are in the community and so are the team from the health department.” After the first of the year, he said, that work will be handled by the health plans “in whatever fashion they choose to do it,” and the plans are still working out what their model will be. The county tried to extend the agreement, with the N.C. Association of Local Health Directors involved in the talks, and could not. Swift said the same shift is happening in counties across the region and the state.

Nearly 20 county employees work in the two programs. The county says it is trying to find them other positions.

ShLanda Burton, who runs the National Birth Coalition and has worked with these families for about 16 years, put the worry plainly. “They might not know who to go to, who to call, who to be able to lean on, especially when they're receiving information from conflicting places,” she said. Her advice for anyone pregnant or postpartum on Medicaid is to read your own plan now, before December. “Understanding your benefits to your pregnancy and postpartum period is really, really important. Do your research.”

FOX8 asked the state Department of Health and Human Services why the model is not continuing and did not get an answer. Neither did we find one. We will follow this as the health plans say what comes next.

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If a dental visit has been on the list you keep not getting to, here is one with no bill attached.

Hasten International Medical Missions is partnering with The Shepherd's Center of Kernersville to hold a free dental and health clinic Friday, Sept. 11, from 9 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon at the center, 636 Gralin St. The dental side covers cleanings and procedures. The health side is a physician assistant doing general checkups, assessments and basic tests.

Appointments are required, and the spots are limited, so this is a call-today item rather than a show-up-Friday item. The number is 336-992-3180.

Dental care is the piece of health care that most often gets skipped when money is tight, and a free chair in the middle of Kernersville is not something that comes around often. If you do not need it, you probably know somebody who does.

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The Villains' fall is going three different directions at once, so here is where each team stands.

Volleyball is the good news. Bishop McGuinness swept visiting Chatham Central 25-15, 25-23, 25-12 to get back to 7-7, and the record undersells it: the Lady Villains are 4-0 in conference play. They opened the year 1-5 on purpose, more or less. Coach Carol Wiedwald loaded the early schedule with 7A and 8A opponents and a tournament in Rock Hill, S.C. “I try to make the schedule tougher every year,” she told the Kernersville News. “I think it makes them better faster. One thing I talked to the team about is not to look at the record. What matters is the conference and the playoffs.” The next home match, against College Prep and Leadership, is listed for 6:15 PM Tuesday.

Girls tennis is finding its footing. Bishop edged East Wilkes 5-4 last Wednesday to move to 3-5. Lucia Neves did not drop a game at the top of the lineup, Porter Redman came back from a 0-6 first set to win 0-6, 6-3, 11-9, and Mary Kennedy Suire took her singles match 6-3, 6-0. Neves and Stella Ropko added the doubles point. Coach Larry Ingram is running the same playbook as Wiedwald: “I like to start the season hard because that prepares them for going forward.” The Villains host South Stokes tonight at 6:30 at Civitan Park, which is the one Kernersville sporting event on the calendar today.

Football is still looking for its first win. East Davidson beat the Villains 36-7 in Thomasville on Friday, a night that included a safety on a sack in the end zone, and Bishop is 0-3. The paper did not identify Bishop's touchdown scorer, so neither will we. Friday the Villains go to Trinity, kickoff at 7.

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