You read it here first, lol! Canadian Press

Monday, October 07, 2002

OTTAWA (CP) - As Allan Eaton awaited his coronation as the owner of Canada's largest pumpkin Sunday, he saw the fruit of his labour literally explode in front of him. The giant pumpkin weighing is held every year at By Market, and this year Eaton had a huge one.

However, when the organizers placed Eaton's pumpkin on the scale it blew up at its base, forcing a disqualification.

The judges weighed the giant pumpkin anyway and it came in at 560.5 kilograms, easily enough to break the Canadian record of 547 kilograms set by Ben Hebb of Bridgewater, N.S., on Saturday.

"I'm disappointed, but that's life," Eaton said.

Another competitor was just as unlucky.

Roch Rivard of Ste-Angele-de-Laval, Que., set the Canadian record last week with a pumpkin weighing 534.2 kilograms, only to have Hebb break it. Rivard's pumpkin still would have had enough weight to win this competition if only it hadn't gone on a diet.

Rivard's pumpkin dried out since setting the record last week and lost almost four kilograms, weighing in at 530.6 kilograms. That fell almost one kilogram short of the pumpkin owned by Bill Greer of Picton, Ont., who won the $3,000 first prize with a weight of 531.5 kilograms.

"If the competition were held a week earlier, I would have won," Rivard said.

-- Anonymous, October 08, 2002

Answers

560.5 kg = 1,236.7 lbs. Not too shabby.

The 1,000 lb barrier was just recently (a year or so ago) broken at the Topsfield (Massachusetts) fair. This year the winner was 1,300 lbs, which I think made it the largest one nationally, and I guess also in North America.

All you get for that is a chance to give those seeds away.

-- Anonymous, October 08, 2002

How much does it cost to move one of those to the scales?

-- Anonymous, October 09, 2002