Great pumpkins

942-pound gourd breaks state record

Sept. 2, 2005

JOEL DAVIDSON\Frontiersman reporter

PALMER - If Charlie Brown had attended the Alaska State Fair Wednesday, his search would have ended.

Two pickups arrived at the fair shortly before 4 p.m. Mysterious and gargantuan lumps sat in the back of the trucks, cloaked by tarps and shrouded in anticipation.

Television cameras, documentarians, photographers and out-of-town tourists pressed in to catch a glimpse of these freaks of nature - these giant pumpkins.

"I couldn't believe it," Ed Iles said, when he described first seeing his son's monstrous gourd. "It was beyond my comprehension."

Ed is the father of Dave Iles, a darkhorse grower from North Pole who set the state record last month with a 752-pound pumpkin at the Tanana Valley State Fair in Fairbanks. Iles' parents came up from Michigan to see if their son could top his own record, which knocked last year's record holder, J.D. Megchelsen, from his pumpkin-patch throne.

On Wednesday, Iles' pumpkin weighed in at 745 pounds, just shy of his record setter three weeks before.

Megchelsen, however, stole the day. The second truck held his own pumpkin, an eventual 942-pound behemoth that re-established the Kenai resident as the premier pumpkin grower of Alaska.

"I guess we're going to play leap frog for a while," Iles said after congratulating Megchelsen on reclaiming the state record. "I'll just have to grow a bigger one next year."

Megchelsen was pleased with his pumpkin but said his predictions were a little off.

"It didn't go heavy like I thought it would," he said, surrounded by flashing cameras and fellow giant-veggie growers. "I thought it had a good chance to go over a thousand, but this'll be just fine."

Record-setting growers walk a fine line between nursing the largest pumpkin possible without overdoing it and causing the vegetable to swell to the point of splitting wide open.

Megchelsen, who didn't know Iles planned to bring another pumpkin to this year's state fair, said his ignorance was a blessing.

"It's probably a good thing I didn't know Dave was growing or I might have blown this one up," he said, before adding, "There's a saying in this business. You're not growin' 'em if you're not blowin' 'em. If you're blowin' 'em you're not showin' 'em. So you've got to push it."

Upon their official weigh-in, the pumpkins hung from a hydraulic-boom scale with state official Chris Schopen from the Division of Weights and Measures overseeing.

When the scale numbers finally settled at 942 pounds, Schopen, in his white lab coat, certified the new record.

With Megchelsen's bloated pumpkin still dangling from the scale, Schopen offered a congratulatory handshake to the new record holder.

"This is fun - it's a blast," Schopen said of the event.

Members of the gawking crowd agreed.

"We've read and heard that Palmer had giant vegetables," said Vivian Cronbaugh, on a visit from Iowa with her husband. "We geared our whole vacation around this."

Contact Joel Davidson at

352-2266, or joel.davidson@ frontiersman.com.