What a Whopper..

For all of the Summer months my work colleague, Kim and her partner Ivo have been growing a pumpkin to enter in the Royal Easter Show in Auckland. The seeds were from the U.S.A, were planted in October, and have been lovingly cared for every day, week after week for the past 5 months.

From all the seeds that were planted, and all the little pumpkins that grew, one outshone the others, and it grew and grew and grew, and when we all thought it had finished, it grew some more. This particular pumpkin has gained in popularity, as all of us from work, and Kim and Ivo's family and friends watched it's progress. Ivo and the pumpkin even made the front page of our local newspaper.

On Thursday of last week the pumpkin was lovingly loaded onto a trailer and driven from Tuakau to Auckland, a drive about an hour on the very busy Auckland motorway. Saturday was weigh in day, the New Zealand record for the largest pumpkin is 360kg, and we all waited on Facebook for Kim's post to let us know if they had won. And we waited, and waited....

Results were deferred as the pumpkin had to be weighed on cattle scales at the Easter Show and not the scales that were used when it was weighed in Tuakau. Our Famous Franklin pumpkin weighed in at a whopping 330kg, unfortunately not enough to get them the winning ribbon, but good enough to get second. The winning pumpkin weighed in at 360kg. So here it is, the second biggest pumpkin in New Zealand.

Well done Ivo and Kim, can't wait until next year.