October 8th, 2012
Thad Starr, 45, has been growing blue-ribbon giant pumpkins for years, but this year's 1,775-pound pale orange behemoth, he knew, was something special.
"This is the most beautiful pumpkin I've ever seen," he said of his prize produce, which measures about 5 feet tall, 4 feet wide and, like all giant pumpkins, lies on its side like a slightly deflated beach ball. "It's a beautiful shape. The big ones kind of end up looking like a cowpie, or they don't look like much. But this one is long and wide - and it held together."
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| Lorenzo Bianchi, 4, climbs on some of his grandfathers pumpkins at the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival Weigh-off contest in Half Moon Bay, Calif. |
Shape aside, it's the ability to hold together that often determines who wins the annual Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off, a 39-year-old Half Moon Bay tradition. Starr's monster won the honor Monday, beating out 49 other entries.
The contest kicks off the town's pumpkin festival each year by inviting in West Coast pumpkin growers to see who has the most gargantuan of gourds.
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Danika Starr, 9, sits with her father's winning pumpkin at the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival Weigh-off contest in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Monday, Oct. 8, 2012. The pumpkin weighed 1,775 pounds, making it a new California record. Starr wins six dollars for each pound, which equals $10,650.
Photo: Tony Avelar / AP |
But if the judges spot any hole or crack, no matter how tiny, that pierces through the pumpkin's 1-foot-thick shell, the entrant is disqualified. Last year's winner, Leonardo Urena of Napa, didn't even enter this year's contest because all his pumpkins split, said Tim Beeman, contest spokesman.
It can be a devastating break, since the pumpkins are often planted around May 1 and require hours of care each day - watering, trimming back other vines, fertilizing - to grow to that size in such a short amount of time.
"The entire plant is manipulated," Starr said. "These things we're doing make them grow sometimes 40 to 50 pounds a day. There's lots of weeding, watering, worrying. You worry it's gonna split, and then it's all over."
Starr, a stay-at-home dad from Pleasant Hill, Ore., started competing in 2006 and won top prize at Half Moon Bay in 2007 and 2008, but this one is his biggest pumpkin yet. It outstripped the runner-up by about 250 pounds and set a new state and festival record, Beeman said. A new world record was set last week at a festival in Massachusetts by a 2,009-pound specimen.
Starr drove the pumpkin down in a "big old trailer" that he had made specially for toting pumpkins. He's using the $6 per pound prize money, which comes out to more than $10,500, to treat his son and daughter to a celebratory family trip to Disneyland. Then they'll return to Half Moon Bay for the weekend, where they'll be the superstars of the festival and the pumpkin will be available for photo-ops.
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| Workers push a giant pumpkin to be weighed at the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival Weigh-off contest in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Monday, Oct. 8, 2012. Thad Starr from Pleasant Hill, Ore., won with a contest record of 1,775 pounds, making it a new California record. Starr wins six dollars for each pound, which equals $10,650. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar) |
Then it's back to Oregon, where Starr says he still has a month of work to do cleaning up the garden, fertilizing the soil and preparing for next year, when he'll grow a set of pumpkins with seeds from this one in hopes of clinching his fourth title. The pumpkin itself - which is not really the type for eating - will become a 5-foot-tall jack-o-lantern in the Starr family's front yard in time for Halloween, he said.
