By a slim four pounds, Thad Starr of Pleasant Hill, Ore., has trumped his winning pumpkin from last year, taking his second consecutive Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off.
Starr’s chalky-white squash beat several gigantic contenders, each weighing over a half-ton. Leonardo Urena of Napa came closest with his huge 1,404 pounder. Joel Holland of Sumner, Wash., won third place with a 1,262-pound pumpkin, barely edging out Jim Sherwood of Mulino, who had a 1,260-pound entry.
 Thad Starr of Pleasant Hill, Oregon winner of the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off for the second year in a row with a 1,528 pound pumpkin is interviewed by the press following his victory. |
“There’s no secret to growing them this big; it was just a good season,” Starr said to a throng of reporters after his victory. “You sit there while your pumpkin is being weighed and you can just hear your heartbeat.”
Starr, a stay-at-home dad, has been growing pumpkins for only three years, but his winning entry this year is reportedly the second-biggest pumpkin in the world this year.
Held Monday morning at the I.D.E.S. Hall in Half Moon Bay, the 35th pumpkin weigh-off drew 65 competing pumpkins and hundreds of visitors from across the West Coast.
Local farmer John Muller also earned a new record, having the biggest locally grown pumpkin for Half Moon Bay. His weighed an even 900 pounds.
Having won three prior pumpkin competitions, Holland said he was just happy to have another award-winning entry this year.
“Everyone’s friendly here and we get along,” Holland said. “There’s some rivalry, of course, but everyone’s just really nervous when their pumpkin is weighed.”
Any farmer at the competition would balk at the notion that growing a champion pumpkin was simply a matter of tossing seeds into the ground and waiting a few months. Many farmers said they had spent untold hours pruning extra blossoms, building elaborate greenhouses, and fertilizing their pets with bizarre concoctions. In Rhode Island, Steve Connolly, the top grower in the world this year, said his 1,568-pound pumpkin received a regimented diet of manure, molasses, ground bone, blood and fish.
San Luis Obispo grower Paul Rys said he couldn’t care less about growing huge mutant pumpkins. Growing the biggest pumpkin, he explained, meant cross breeding pumpkin plants with other gourds, making a winning entry more hybrid squash than pumpkin.
“But my entry is for beauty, not bulk,” he explained, carefully pivoting his dark-orange contender so that the audience would see the pumpkin’s “good side” in the audience-judged beauty contest.
Hoisted in the air before the crowd along with three other pumpkins by a team of forklifts, Salinas grower Jerry Porter’s well-shaped entry received the most applause for “Most Beautiful Pumpkin,” winning him $500.
The competitors weren’t the only out-of-towners to travel to the contest. Dozens of visitors and family traversed from across the Bay Area to see the Coastside’s emblematic championship.
“This is awesome. You have all the colors and the shapes.” said Sherry Dobbins of San Jose. “It’s been on our to-do list for years, maybe now we can do it every year.”
The top five heaviest pumpkins and other champion cucurbits will be displayed on Main Street at the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival this weekend.
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