Let's be honest. When I first saw that news, I thought it was a typo. A single pumpkin weighing 3,156 pounds? That's an unbelievable number when you think about the Halloween pumpkins sold at the local grocery store.

But it's true. On October 10th, at a weigh-off held at a farm in Warren, Rhode Island, a grower named Ron Wallace recorded that weight.

Before the competition, Great Pumpkin Commonwealth (GPC) judges checked the pumpkin for cracks and compliance with regulations before weighing it. Guinness World Records introduced this as the world record a few days later.

What's even funnier is that the previous record was set just a week earlier. On October 3rd, Ian Paton from Hampshire, England, broke his own record with a pumpkin weighing 2,856 pounds, only to have it surpassed a week later.

Guinness noted that it's quite rare for a record in this category to change hands so quickly. It seems there's a competitive arms race in the pumpkin industry.

Some of you might recognize the name Wallace. He was the first person to grow a pumpkin over 2,000 pounds at the Topsfield Fair in Massachusetts in 2012, specifically a 2,009-pound pumpkin.

At that time, the competition offered a $10,000 bonus for the first person to exceed a ton, which Wallace claimed. And 14 years later, he broke the 3,000-pound barrier.

According to him, this was the first season he grew pumpkins in a greenhouse. It's impressive that someone who has been growing pumpkins for nearly 35 years is still trying new methods.

What about the West Coast? The World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off held every October in Half Moon Bay, California, is considered the Super Bowl of this field.

This year, it took place on October 12th, and Travis Gienger, a horticulture teacher from Anoka, Minnesota, won with a pumpkin weighing 2,389 pounds. The pumpkin is named Rocky. This marks his fifth victory.

Gienger set the world record at the same competition in 2023 with a weight of 2,749 pounds and topped the charts again in 2024 with 2,471 pounds.

Last year, in 2025, Gienger couldn't compete because his pumpkin split during cultivation. In the meantime, Brandon Dawson from Santa Rosa won with a weight of 2,346 pounds.

Dawson was the runner-up in 2024, losing by just 6 pounds. He waited a year to redeem himself, which is quite a sports drama.

The prize money is $9 per pound for the winning pumpkin. Dawson earned $21,114 last year.

At first glance, that seems like a lot of money, but this is reality. When you factor in the costs of fertilizer, water, greenhouse, and the labor that doesn't take a day off for months, it's hard to call it a profitable venture.

Gienger mentioned that when he set the 2023 record, he watered his pumpkins up to 12 times a day. You can forget about vacations or business trips that year.

The roots of this competition are interesting as well. The Half Moon Bay competition started in 1974 as a friendly wager between Half Moon Bay and Circleville, Ohio, to see who could grow the biggest pumpkin.

This local pride battle has evolved over 50 years into a system involving international regulations, certified judging, and Guinness. This is how America operates: first, make everything big, and then rank it.

The GPC, which currently manages this competition, has established certified weighing locations worldwide and operates under unified regulations. For a record to receive official recognition, it must meet their standards.

The variety most growers use is the Atlantic Giant. Developed by Howard Dill in Nova Scotia, Canada, this variety is considered the starting point for giant pumpkin competitions.

However, having good seeds alone isn't enough. Good seeds are managed like pedigrees among growers, and the lineage of a pumpkin's seeds can determine the results for the following year.

Ultimately, this is the result of a combination of seeds, soil, weather, and human determination. If any one of these elements is missing, you can't stand on the scale.

I found this point oddly relatable. For us immigrants, isn't it similar? At first, we all spend years on things that others laugh at, and the results are only revealed when weighed.

If you talk about this in Korea, you'd probably hear, "You could be doing something else with that time." From an efficiency standpoint, that's a valid point.

But here, people take pride in that inefficiency. No one finds it strange that farmers, teachers, and engineers spend their weekends in pumpkin patches.

In the fall, there are pumpkin events of all sizes in every neighborhood. While you might not see a 3,000-pound pumpkin, I recommend witnessing the scene of a forklift weighing a pumpkin at a local fair at least once.

The world is noisy, and the news is depressing every day. In the midst of it all, some people dedicate a year to a single pumpkin, and the world record changes hands twice in a week.

People who are serious about seemingly pointless things, I think that America is much better than the political side of things. I plan to keep an eye on the scale numbers next October as well.