It’s that time of the year…pumpkin growing contests. A car manufacturing engineer from California became champion this week of an annual pumpkin-weighing contest in northern California where his massive gourd upset the two time winner, who had won the top prize four years in a row. Brandon Dawson of northern California, won the world championship pumpkin weigh-off in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. His winning gourd came in at 2,346 pounds, about 400 pounds short of the world record set in 2023 of 2,748 pounds. Even so, Dawson collected a prize of $9 a pound which amounts to over $22,000.
Anyone growing a world record pumpkin gets a $30,000 prize on top of the regular prize. The biggest one at the 2025 Kansas State Fair look puny in comparison, at 1,303 pounds, the state record is 2,239 pounds set in 2023.
