Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 19 Entries. Friday, March 7 View Page Well, it finally rained, so it looks like we are going to be able to grow pumpkins this year! We've gotten about 10 inches of rain in the last month, which has lessened the hysteria and paranoia around water rationing for this summer.   Friday, March 7 View Page I'm looking forward to growing a 1985 Miller! What a good looking beast it was...   Friday, March 7 View Page I'm also going to grow a 2032 Mathison. What a beast it was...   Friday, March 7 View Page Here is my 1578 from last year. 9% heavy. What a beast, with a good looking guy behind it!   Friday, March 7 View Page I built myself a good looking shed for my chemicals & other stuff that I need to keep dry when my patch floods.   Sunday, March 30 View Page I recently got a new John Deere tractor. It is model 3520 and is 38 horsepower. A big upgrade over my Kioti CK20 (22 HP).   Wednesday, August 27 View Page 1446 Pugh fruit today (day 60) and taping more than 20 inches bigger than anything I have ever had at this point. I think this shape will hold together as it grows over the next 45 or so days. This seed grew my 1578 Pugh (that I took to Half Moon Bay last year, +9% heavy). This is going to be a lot bigger...and if it goes heavy OMG! I will make sure Pingrey's Great Dane stays off it.   Sunday, September 14 View Page Now that we are in the home stretch, I am glad to live in part of the world that helps us get great weight gains in September. My greenie is slowly chugging along on to what I hope end up at 400" OTT. The fruit on my 1446, 2009 and 1894 are doing well too!   Sunday, September 14 View Page Here is my 1446 fruit at today at day 79. Sometime this week this will be the largest fruit by OTT measurement that I've ever grown. I think it will go nice and heavy too. I think it will end up in the 460's OTT...maybe more. I really want to take it to Circleville to go head-to-head with Cecil, but since my address does not qualify me for Circleville, I'll take it to one of our big California contests.   Sunday, September 14 View Page This is the fruit on my 2009 Wallace which is 72 days old today. It is still moving along really well, but it isn't too old. This & my 1446 pumpkin remind me of the old middle school math problem where there were two trains on tracks beside each other and are twenty miles apart. One is moving 50% faster than the other one. When will the second train catch up to the first one? According to my projections that will occur in my patch in 20 days...just in time for Elk Grove!   Sunday, September 14 View Page Unfortunately I'm absolutely sure that my pumpkins are not the largest ones in California. Our contests this year are going to be blood baths.   Friday, September 19 View Page Last weekend my company put on a big Mud Run at a nearby Coast Guard Base. Now my event production season is officially over for the year! During the summer I use my patch as a way to keep my sanity during the chaos of producing huge events. It provides me with a quiet place to think and get away from the frenzy that is my office.   Friday, September 19 View Page It seems that my big pumpkin has successfully digested the kitten that Gary Miller gave me last week. Gary has a whole flock of cats and discovered last year that if you feed them to large pumpkins with "mouths" like his 1985 had, that it helps make the fruit go heavy. Anyway, today my 1446 fruit surpassed my big one from three years ago in OTT measurement! I think I will pay a visit to Gary this weekend and pick up a larger cat to feed to this beast to keep it going.   Friday, September 19 View Page My 2009 fruit does not have a mouth, so it will not be getting fed any cats. It too is growing nicely and is rolling down the tracks to catching up to the 1446 fruit.   Friday, September 19 View Page Here is an overhead shot of my 996 greenie. This baby is over 5 feet wide. I've been measuring fruit today to figure out how big my pallets are going to need to be. Now that I am free from my event production work, I think I'll go to work on building some custom pallets.   Friday, September 19 View Page When your kids are little you can put them in pics with your pumpkins and make your pumpkins look huge. Owen turns 13 next week and is nearly as big as I am (with the exception of him being skinny, and me being quite a bit plumper than I used to be before I became a pumpkin grower). I guess the answer to being able to have an impressive pumpkin pic with a big kid is just to grow a bigger pumpkin!   Wednesday, September 24 View Page Another day, another inch. That's all I ask. That shouldn't be too much to ask for should it?   Wednesday, September 24 View Page I got a package delivered by UPS yesterday!   Wednesday, September 24 View Page My new lifting ring made by No See Lee! 40" across, made for lifting 2000 pound pumpkins. My old ring that I've had for 12 years has served me well, but as my pumpkins get bigger and so do the consequences of damaging one when I'm lifting them...it was time to get a bigger ring that will put less stress in the sides of the bigguns.