NICK EICHER, HOST: Being cooped up at home due to the pandemic paid handsomely for a Minnesota horticulture teacher. 

40-year-old Travis Gienger passed the time productively feeding and watering a pumpkin.  

But not just any pumpkin…

AUDIO: The great pumpkin!

“A” if not “the” great pumpkin. 

Gienger watered it up to 10 times a day and fed and fertilized it at least twice each day.

He then hauled it from Minnesota all the way to the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California just south of San Francisco.

GIENGER: So it was about a 35-hour drive, and with something like this, you’re just white-knuckling every bump. You know, you don’t want to hit those bumps and have it crack on you!

That’d be some kind of mess. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. So his 23-hundred, 50-pound great pumpkin took the $16,000 prize—little less than 7 bucks a pound.

So a great pumpkin but still not the greatest. In the 40-year history of the event, the heaviest-ever was more than 2,500 pounds.

That’s a lot of pumpkin spice. 

It’s The World and Everything in It.