CARVING A PUMPKIN? It's a snap, right? You just need a pulp bowl, like maybe one that's cereal-sized, and a few tools, like a properly sharpened knife and scooper, and a candle, too, either battery-operated or the old-school wick-and-flame kind. That is, of course, if you're dealing with a ten-pounder, or thereabouts, but if you were to multiply that by, oh, 230, resulting in a pumpkin that's 2,363 pounds, how would you approach your jack o'lantern creation? Would you need a full-sized klieg light, or some massive source of illumination, to light it up? Would you need a giant trash can to hold all of the pulp and a child's plastic swimming pool to contain all of the seeds? Pumpkin people may ponder such important questions from time to time, but they're aren't just fantasy or hypothetical, for an actual 2,363-pound pumpkin showed up in Half Moon Bay on Monday, Oct. 9. That was the date of the annual Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off, and Joel Holland of Sumner, Washington delivered the hugest of the huge specimens. It was the...
"2ND HEAVIEST PUMPKIN... ever grown worldwide," and Mr. Holland, a retired firefighter, won a nice sum that'll buy a lot of seeds, the kind that grow big pumpkins, down the road. The prize money clocked in at seven bucks per pound, meaning the Washingtonian departed the Pumpkin Capital of the World with $16,541. No word on whether Mr. Holland will eventually carve this behemoth, but it will go on display, fully intact, at the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival on Saturday, Oct. 14 and Sunday, Oct. 15. The mondo victor won't be all by its lonesome, though; four other mondo pumpkins, all top-finishers at the 2017 competition, will also put in colossal cameos at the weekend-long party.
