It’s decorative gourd season. It’s edible gourd season. And, best of all, it’s gigantic gourd season.

The world is garbage lately, right? And don’t we all need a way to cope? And isn’t looking at photos of beaming people standing next to their hog-size pumpkins just as valid a method as, say, screaming into a pillow in a darkened room until you’re hoarse? Join us on a journey into this polite and gentle ritual display of agrarian pride!


Steve Daletas of Pleasant Hill, Ore., celebrates his first-place win in the 45th annual Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off on Oct. 8 in Half Moon Bay, Calif. His pumpkin weighs 2,170 pounds. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group/AP)

Seriously. In awe at the size of these lads. Absolute units.


Graham Barratt of Gloucester, England, with his pumpkin, which won with a weight of 705 pounds at the Harrogate Autumn Flower Show in Harrogate, England. (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)

Paddle it through a lake of pumpkin spice lattes, my friend. This is a real thing that people do for fun, somehow.


A man paddles his giant pumpkin boat during the traditional pumpkin race in Lohmar, Germany, on Oct. 3. (David Sahl/Reuters)

These pumpkins are thicccccc.


Entrants deliver their pumpkin to the Harrogate Autumn Flower Show. (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)

Allow me to introduce you to my large adult son, this pumpkin.


Joe House of Princeville, Ill., waits for help to hoist his prize 532-pound pumpkin from his truck to the scale during the Morton Pumpkin Festival Pumpkin Weigh Off in Morton, Ill., in September. (Ron Johnson/Peoria Journal Star/AP)

Never mind that they are grown for their size, not their beauty, so the pumpkins all look like lumpy deflated beige hot-air balloons. YOU’RE DOING AMAZING, SWEETIE.


Carolyn Gordon hugs a pumpkin before the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay.  (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group/AP)

More from Voraciously: 

I used every pumpkin spice product I could find for a week. Now my armpits smell like nutmeg.

A three-ingredient pumpkin pasta that’s primed for fall

At two new pizza museums, the approaches are as different as Chicago deep dish and a New York slice