I was afraid that the drought this year would impact the giant pumpkins. Maybe it did, but if so it was only in a positive manner -- the giant pumpkin at the Fair this year weighs over 1100 pounds! And that's not even mentioning the other somewhat smaller (but still ginormous) pumpkins in the same display.

Think of that. Over half a ton of pumpkin. Over 1000 pounds of shell and seeds and let's face it, goopy innards.

That's amazing enough. What's even more amazing was a blog post from Kevin Kelly that I saw this week. Kevin lives in California and recently attended the Giant Pumpkin Champion Weigh Off in Half Moon Bay. As Kevin noted in his blog post, the champion pumpkin in that contest weighed over 1500 pounds! And furthermore, a pumpkin that size isn't even the record-holder. The world record pumpkin weighs 1,698 pounds.

There's a story on the world record pumpkin at BigPumpkins.com, which is all about -- you guessed it -- big pumpkins. The site has grower diaries, a photo gallery (including a 1500+ pound pumpkin that looks disturbingly like a deflated basketball) and details on the Pumpkin Paddle, where people in Massachusetts hollow out pumpkins and paddle them around a pond. Seriously. It's this Sunday, if you were looking for a road trip. (As Kevin says, "Our notions of what a vegetable is can be subverted and re-imagined by giant vegetables." He got that right -- folks up north are turning pumpkins into watercraft.)

Congratulations to the North Carolina half-ton pumpkin. Now ... can you just imagine how big that thing would have been if it had rained?