Now appearing: The great pumpkin
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Meyer's Farm Market north of Janesville may have the largest pumkin for miles around. The 700 lb. behemoth is shown with a typical home pumpkin hat weighs in at 19 lbs..
Photo
Meyer's Farm Market north of Janesville may have the largest pumkin for miles around. The 700 lb. behemoth is shown with a typical home pumpkin hat weighs in at 19 lbs..
MILTON — How would you describe a 700-pound pumpkin?
“Big” hardly covers it.
“Ginormous” might do, but that’s not really a word.
“Voluminous” is descriptive, but too clinical.
“Embonpoint” sounds marvelous, especially when pronounced with the proper French accent, but how many people know it means “pleasingly plump?”
Use any adjective you like, but if you want to buy said giant pumpkin, you’ll have to take a trip to Meyer’s Farm Market, 1329 E. Milton-Harmony Townline Road.
In a delicious, pumpkin-related irony, Meyer’s has a 3,700-pound, 17-foot tall, 22-foot in diameter fiberglass pumpkin on top of its silo.
That pumpkin is not for sale.
Bryan Meyers, owner of the market, grows about 14 varieties of pumpkins on his land.
“We have a lot of different sizes and colors,” Meyers said. “The largest variety we grow gets to 100- to 150-pounds.”
The 700-pound pumpkin came from the farm of Marc Roe, a cash-crop farmer who lives south of Whitewater.
He’s taken up pumpkin growing as a hobby, Meyers said.
The pumpkin was transported to Meyer’s on a carpet-topped wooden pallet. The buyer of the big guy can have it delivered or take it home on his or her own.
Roe’s pumpkin is big, but it doesn’t compare with this year’s record-breaker: Christy Harp, of Jackson Township, Ohio, set a world record Oct. 3 with a 1,725-pound pumpkin from Atlantic Giant seeds.
Of course, all this talk of immense pumpkins leads to an obvious question: What could you do with them?
n Make the largest jack-o-lantern ever. You could hide a small child inside and have him or her pop out at the neighbors.
n Use the seeds to grow your own colossal pumpkin.
n Roast the seeds and hand them out as Halloween treats. Sure, the kids won’t be thrilled, but the roasted seeds will be better for them than mini Snickers.
n Pies. Usually, pie pumpkins or sweet pumpkins are best for pies. However, a traditional jack-o-lantern can work.
Most pie recipes call for one 16-ounce can of pumpkin puree. It’s hard to know how much puree one could get from a 700-pound pumpkin. However, it’s probably safe to say that at a pound of pumpkin puree per pie, a 700-pound pumpkin would make a bunch of pies.
“A bunch” hardly seems to cover it.
A plethora of pies?
A legion of pies?
A surfeit? A heap? Oodles?
Oct 24, 2009 at 8:21 p.m.
Suggest removal
Awesome. I have tried growing large pumpkins in my small back yard garden, but the kids from around the neighborhood like to smash them before they are done. Good Job!
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