This Champion Pumpkin Weighs More Than a U-Haul
At the annual Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Weigh-In, a pumpkin weighing 1,910 pounds took the crown
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This story originally appeared on Travel + Leisure.
A 1,910-pound pumpkin was named the winner of the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California on last week.
The pumpkin was grown by Cindy Tobeck, an elementary school teacher from Washington.
For comparison: A U-Haul trailer weighs about 1,800 pounds. An average Clydesdale horse weighs about 2,000 pounds. The heaviest brown bear on record weighed 2,500 pounds. The 1,900-pound pumpkin could be used to make over 600 pumpkin pies.
Tobeck transported the pumpkin to the contest strapped to the back of a truck trailer. To weigh the pumpkin, contest officials lifted the gourds with forklifts and special harnesses onto an industrial-strength digital scale.
The contest had advertised a $30,000 prize for any pumpkin that could break the world record for heaviest pumpkin—which would have been 2,232 pounds until Sunday, when a 2,623-pound pumpkin smashed the record at the Giant Pumpkin European Championship in Germany.
Although Tobeck’s pumpkin did not break the world record, she still won $6 for each pumpkin pound, for a total of $11,460.
The winner of last year’s Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay was 1,969 pounds. The record for the contest was set in 2014 by a 2,058-pound pumpkin.
The Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Weigh-Off started in 1974 when city officials challenged a town in Ohio that called itself the “Pumpkin Capital of the World.” The city won the first weigh-off with a 132-pound pumpkin.
Tobeck’s award-winning pumpkin, which was on display at last weekend's Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival, weighs 10 times more than the original pumpkin winner.
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