by Jared Garrett

Created on: October 31, 2007

My Halloween pumpkin is a turnip!

Have you ever wondered why we use pumpkins to hollow out and then carve any number of designs into? What a good question! Did you know that as the legend of Stingy Jack goes, the first Jack o' Lantern was a turnip? That's right, so if you want to use a turnip, go ahead.

But the truth is, these facts are not unusual; they are common to the tradition of jack o' lanterns. But guess what! My Halloween pumpkin is unique to my block and even my neighborhood. Here are some facts about my pumpkin that make it unusual:

* It's big. I don't want to give the impression that my Halloween pumpkin is a prize-winner at a state fair, but it's got some size to it! It's big and round enough that if I had cut a big enough hole, I could have put my eighteen month old kid in it. After cleaning it out, of course.

Indeed, this is the biggest pumpkin I have ever laid my own two eyes on (never having gone to a state fair). I know, everyone's asking, "Well how big is it?" Before the big carving event of last night, it weighed in at 76 pounds. I kid you not.

This pumpkin is so big around that I can only barely put my arms around it. And if I want to move it, I have to use a wheelbarrow, because I can't get a strong grip on it.

* I grew it. I kid you not. I grew this baby. In fact, I grew two, but my big Halloween pumpkin's little sister is about half the size of the monster.

I didn't use Almonzo's tricks to get the pumpking perfect and lovely, however. You know who Almonzo is, don't you? The guy from the Little House on the Prairie books that Laura Ingalls married so she could get the cool last name of Wilder. I used full-on, natural compost to get this pumpkin so big.

* My Halloween pumpkin was mostly green inside. At first I thought it had rotted in there, but it was fine. And I don't mean the flesh; I mean the innards that I cleaned out. Much of the stringy stuff surrounding the seeds was a pale, almost seaweed green color. Funky eh?

* My Halloween pumpkin grew from a heritage seed. That means that it is not, I mean it, not a hybrid. What else does this mean? I can use the seeds I pulled out of it to grow more next year!

* The final unusual fact about my Halloween pumpkin is that it is in the shape of a hemisphere. This is what happens when you forget to turn it gently on a regular basis. So one side is almost completely flat, and the other side is a lovely round shape. Can you guess which side we put the goofy face on? The curved.

So there you go: five unusual facts about my Halloween pumpkin. You have me beat if your Halloween pumpkin is a watermelon!

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