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Winning pumpkin tops one-ton mark, breaks records
By Bob Jackson
CANFIELD
For Quinn Werner, growing huge pumpkins is kind of like having a baby back in the days when the stork delivered them.
You can try to figure it out and take your best guess, but you never really know what you’ve got until it’s out there.
It would have taken an awfully strong stork to make Werner’s delivery Saturday.
Werner, of Saegerstown, Pa., brought the crowd at Parks Garden Center to its feet when his big-boy entry tipped the scales at a whopping 2,020.5 pounds to win the Ohio Valley Giant Pumpkin Growers Weigh-Off. It was the first time a pumpkin had topped a ton in the local contest’s 21-year history.
It broke the Ohio record of 2,008 pounds, which was set last year by a grower near Cincinnati.
“We wanted that [state] title back here at our weigh-off,” said Tim Parks, owner of Parks Garden Center.
The OVGPG is part of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, a worldwide organization that sponsors some 100 similar weigh-offs each year. Werner, who’s been growing giant pumpkins since 1999, was inducted into the GPC Hall of Fame earlier this year for his contributions to the hobby.
Over the years, he’s grown nearly 100 pumpkins that weighed more than 1,000 pounds, and he’s won dozens of weigh-offs in several states. Until this year, his best effort was 1,730.5 pounds.
Though some growers take portable scales into the pumpkin patch and weigh their pumpkins while they’re still on the vine, Werner prefers the old-school approach. Growers use a formula based on various factors, including the circumference of the gourd, to estimate a pumpkin’s weight. They don’t know the actual weight, though, until it’s taken out of the field and placed on a scale.
Based on that formula, Werner’s winning entry was estimated to weigh just less than 1,840 pounds. He was quietly hoping the actual weight would be heavier, but said he was surprised to see the numbers on the overhead digital scale roll past 2,000 pounds.
“I really didn’t think it was going to be that heavy,” a smiling Werner said as he accepted congratulations from friends and colleagues. “Yeah, I was very surprised to see that.”
Werner had another pumpkin in the contest that was estimated at 1,454 pounds, but ended up weighing 1,712 pounds.
Growing giant pumpkins is something farmers have been doing for generations, said 80-year-old Ron Moffett of Salem. But advances in technology have taken the hobby to a whole new level.
“I won at the Canfield Fair twice,” said Moffett, noting he was the first to enter a 500-pound pumpkin at the fair. “But these guys are out of my league. This is a young man’s game now.”
He said that in days gone by, growers would simply enlist the aid of neighbors to help them lift pumpkins from the patch, load them into the back of a truck and take them on the road.
“But even then, you had to be careful because [pumpkins] are slippery, so they’re easy to drop,” he said.
The pumpkins at the OVGPG weigh-offs are toted to the scales on a forklift, and are carefully moved from there to the scale with the help of heavy duty straps and an industrial, hydraulic hoist. Growers haul them to and from contests on flat trailers that are padded to keep the bottoms from cracking, because a cracked pumpkin means disqualification from the weigh-off.
“You can’t just circle a bunch of people around and lift those things up now,” Moffett said, laughing. “You need all kinds of equipment just to move them around.”
Gary Felty and Kathie Day, both of Salem, entered a pumpkin in Saturday’s contest that was only about half the size of Werner’s winner at 641 pounds, but they were every bit as proud of it.
“It was our first time trying to grow a giant pumpkin,” said Felty, 52. “We saw some at the Canfield Fair and just decided we just wanted to give it a shot. Now we’re hooked on it.”
Felty and Day, 56, said they planned to take their pumpkin to Copeland Oaks retirement community in Sebring, where they both work in the dietary department, so residents there can see it.
“A lot of them can’t get out and around, so they don’t get a chance to see something like that,” Day said. “We think they’ll get a kick out of it.”
David Richardson of Youngstown attended the weigh-off with his daughters, Sinclaire, 13, and Sincere, 9. He said it’s an annual event for them, along with a stop at nearby Whitehouse Fruit Farm.
“It’s just a part of the Halloween season for us,” said Richardson, 32. “The kids really like coming out and seeing all the huge pumpkins.”