"I'm ecstatic," Thad Starr said. "I'm very, very happy. You always want to hope. You always want to dream. That's why we do this."
The giant pumpkin set a contest record, and its owner received a prize of about 13 dollars for each kilogram, or $9,144 dollars in total.
Starr, who was competing for just his second year, defeated 80 contesters, including Joel Holland, the three-time champion. This time Holland finished second with a pumpkin weighing 627 kg (1,384 lbs), setting his own personal record.
While the farmers were squaring off for top honors, other participants were simply enjoying the event, like students from Mountain View's Frank Huff School, who grew a 144.7 kg (319 lbs) pumpkin as a class project.
Pumpkin records exist in both weight and carving. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the world's heaviest pumpkin record was set nearly a week earlier, on September 29. Joe Jutras from Rhode Island, brought a 766 kg (1689 lbs) pumpkin to the Topsfield Fair GPC weigh-off, beating the previous world record by 85 kg (187 lbs).
