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 Pumpkins
are a huge symbol of Halloween! You can carve them, bake them, decorate
with them and eat the seeds! The Jack-O-Lantern started as an old Celtic
custom on Samhain, using a turnip carved out and filled with a glowing
coal. Now days, we carve pumpkins and use candles or battery powered
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World Record Giant Pumpkin
It's no surprise. The world record fell
again. And, it did so in a very H-U-G-E way.
 Joe
Jutras from North Scituate, Rhode Island, brought a 1689 pound pumpkin
to the Topsfield Fair GPC weigh-off in Topsfield, Ma. on September 29,
2007. His new world record beat the previous world record by 187 pounds.
Joe grew this monster on the
998.6 Pukos 2005 and crossed it with 1225 Jutras 2003, both varieties
that won with in past years.
Last year's world record holder was Ron Wallace with a 1502 pound
pumpkin at the Rhode Island Weighoff on October 7, 2006.
Growing a Big Pumpkin. A Really Big Pumpkin
Joe Jutras of Rhode Island grew this
year's world record-setter, at seven hundred sixty kilograms.
Transcript of radio broadcast:
29 October 2007
This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
Joe Jutras lives in a small state, Rhode Island, but he
thinks big. This year he grew a pumpkin weighing seven hundred sixty
kilograms.
His pumpkin broke the world record set in two thousand six. Another
Rhode Islander, Ron Wallace, grew last year's champion. That one weighed
six hundred eighty-one kilograms.
Huge pumpkins like these can sell for ten thousand dollars. Some people
are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a single seed.
Sue Jutras explained to us how her husband grew his record pumpkin and a
few smaller but still really big ones.
He started the seeds indoors in April. When the third leaf appeared, he
planted them outdoors under a temporary shelter. He removed the shelter
once the root system began to push against it.
He buried the vines so the root system could continue to grow. He fed
the plant a mixture containing fish and seaweed. He worked with his
record-breaker twenty to thirty hours each week during the main growing
season in July and August.
He needed a forklift truck to carry it to the official weighing. The
competition took place a few weeks ago at a fair in Topsfield, Rhode
Island.
By the way, Joe Jutras is not a farmer. He operates a woodworking
business -- that is, when he is not taking care of his pumpkins.
When Americans, especially children, think of pumpkins, they usually
think of Halloween on October thirty-first. Pumpkins are a traditional
part of the celebration. People like to cut funny or scary faces into
pumpkins and put a candle inside.
Fresh pumpkins might end up as jack-o-lanterns at Halloween. But canned
pumpkin meat is popular in pies, breads and other baked goods, and
pumpkin seeds are eaten as snacks.
Five states produced more than one hundred million dollars worth of
pumpkin last year. The top producers by value were Ohio, Pennsylvania,
New York, Illinois and California.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by
Jerilyn Watson. Transcripts and MP3 files of our reports are at
voaspecialenglish.com. We leave you with a song by John McCutcheon
called "Pumpkin Man."
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Every
year, Halloween enthusiasts anxiously await the retail
industry to begin their Halloween season and see who's
first to stock products for the spooky season. Many
stores begin stocking Halloween products as early as
July! |
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