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Great Pumpkin Grows Up

Jim Beauchemin of New Hampshire shows off his prize-winning pumpkin -- all 1,314.8 pounds of it. At times this summer, the pumpkin grew 35 pounds a day. (By Thomas Roy -- Union Leader)

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By the time Beauchemin picked the pumpkin on the last day of September, it was 183 inches around, about the size of a washing machine. He estimated that it might weigh 1,250 pounds.

Then, to his delight, it went heavy -- perhaps aided by thicker-than-average walls, or by Beauchemin's decision to put the pumpkin's severed vines into jars of water for one last gulp.

Before yelling his planned victory cry, Beauchemin turned to his wife, Susan, who had watched her husband spend 10 years growing pumpkins and had hoped that he might at least be getting good at it.

"I said, 'Honey, did I really win?'

"And she said, 'Honey, you just won the whole thing.' "

So how do you cap off a pumpkin season like this?

In Goffstown, you turn a pumpkin into a boat. This weekend is the annual pumpkin regatta, in which Atlantic Giants are hollowed out to make room for a single passenger, then fitted with trolling motors and paraded on the Piscataquog River.

Beauchemin is saving his champion pumpkin for a gigantic jack-o'-lantern. But he will still be in the regatta, sitting in an 800-pound pumpkin he also grew this year.

And for that one day, at the very least, it will be impossible for anyone to accuse him of being out of his gourd.

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