It weighed a whopping 1,471.5 pounds!
‘Tis the season for pumpkin everything. Pumpkin patches, pumpkin carving, pumpkin spice lattes — and naturally, pumpkin growing. To that end, Dale Marshall of Anchorage, Alaska has been hard at work raising healthy pumpkins this year, and it looks like it’s paid off.
He entered not one but three pumpkins into the Alaska State Fair’s Great Weigh-Off. In doing so, he was able to walk away with the first prize, creating a new record for the Alaska State Fair in the process.
The previous record was also held by Marshall, but it’s a victory nonetheless. This year, his largest pumpkin weighed in at a whopping 1,471.5 pounds and measured 16 feet, 8 inches in circumference, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
As you can see from the photos posted to the Alaska State Fair’s Facebook, this pumpkin is just as large as you’d imagine it to be:
Transporting something this size definitely wasn’t easy:
Marshall told the Anchorage Daily News that getting the pumpkin to the fair required cutting a hole in the roof of his greenhouse.
“I took a Sawzall to it and cut it out of there,” he told the publication.
Once it arrived at the fairgrounds, it was carefully brought in for everyone to see:
A pumpkin this large is a mesmerizing sight, indeed!
There was no denying Marshall deserved the first-place ribbon for this incredible pumpkin:
Turns out he’s got quite the green thumb. This most recent win is actually the third time in 11 years that Marshall has been able to set a state record with his pumpkins. When it comes to growing record-setting pumpkins year after year, Marshall makes it sound simple and chalks it up to “vine management.”
“It’s all in the roots, keeping them healthy, basically,” he told the publication. “For these things to keep growing, you just got to keep watering them.”
While Marshall’s pumpkin may be the biggest ever in Alaska, it’s surprisingly not the biggest in the world. According to the Washington Post, the world record for the largest pumpkin was set by Mathias Willemijns in 2016.
Willemijns’ pumpkin weighed in at 2,624.6 pounds, outweighing the Alaska record holder’s pumpkin by 1,153.1 pounds.
What better way to ring in the fall season than by learning all about the world’s most giant pumpkins? The more pumpkin, the better as far as we’re concerned.