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Pair of Tenino pumpkin farmers hit the big time

P-I News Services

HALF MOON BAY, Calif. - A Washington state farmer with an 868 pound
squash won the 24th  annual Half Moon Bay great pumpkin weigh-off
yesterday, but fell well short of the years; record, set by a California
farmer at 977 pounds.

Sherry La Rue, a 45-year-old schoolteacher from Tenino won $3,000 for
the 39-inch-tall, 171-inch-around Atlantic Giant varietal, topping more
than 100 entries.

Her husband, Jack won $1,000 for his second-place gourd, which tipped
the scales at 819.

Third place and $500 went to Chris Anderson of Moraga, whose pumpkin
weighed 815 pounds.

Another one of Anderson's pumpkins holds this year's world record, at
977 pounds.  It won first place at the Dixon May Fair on Oct. 4 and
ranks as fourth largest in pumpkin-weighing history, according to fair
spokesman Mike Green.

The largest pumpkin ever weighed - since records were first kept at the
World's Fair in Paris in  1900 -  weighed in at 1061 pounds in New York
in 1996.

Monday's weighing kicked off all annual Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival,
which is slated to culminate this weekend with a two-day street fair
including music, harvest arts and crafts and, of course, pumpkin pie
eating and pumpkin carving contests as well as a costume parade.

Organizers estimate as many as 250,000 people will attend and consume
50,000 pieces of pie, spokesman Time Beeman said.

Sherry and Jack LaRue have been planting pumpkins for about five years,
hand pollinating and playing around with hybrid seeds and different
fertilizers to get the best results.

In that time, they have developed a friendly competition, she said.

"Usually, he beats me," she said.
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