Vol. III, No. 10, October 2025
Fun facts about pumpkins
In 2024, there were roughly 1.44 billion pounds of pumpkins harvested from 68,900 acres in the U.S. That's 108 square miles of pumpkin fields. That's the size of Charleston, S.C.
Between 80% and 85% of the pumpkins grown in the U.S. each year are used for jack-o'-lanterns and ornamental purposes. Somewhere between 500 million and 750 million ornamental & carving-type pumpkins are produced annually. That could easily be at least two pumpkins for every person in the U.S.
These are leading states producing pumpkins for ornamental use and jack-o'-lanterns for Halloween.
While Illinois is the nation's largest overall pumpkin producer, about 80% of its output is devoted to processing (pie pumpkins and canned products), making it #5 for ornamental and carving-type pumpkins.
The first jack-o-lanterns weren't made from pumpkins at all. They were made from turnips! An 18th-century Irish folk tale said that "Stingy Jack" tried to trick the devil into paying for his bar tab. After Jack died, the devil wouldn't let Jack cross over to the afterlife. Instead, he had to wander the Earth at night, lit by a single coal. He put his coal in a hollowed-out turnip and earned the nickname "Jack of the Lantern." This Irish tale led to the tradition of carving turnips in Jack's likeness, to keep him at bay.
When Irish emigrants moved to America, they found pumpkins much more suitable for carving than turnips, and the modern Jack-o'-Lantern was born.
The heaviest pumpkin ever grown in the United States weighed 2,729 lbs., more than one ton. It was grown in 2023 by Travis Gienger from Anoka, Minnesota. His "Michael Jordan" pumpkin measured an impressive 7 feet 5 inches long by 6 feet 7 inches wide, roughly the size of a couch and comparable to a Volkswagen Beetle.
Travis Gienger's 2,729 lb “Michael Jordan" pumpkin
Pumpkins have other uses than for pies, processing, jack-o’-lanterns and ornaments. In August 2022, Duane Hansen from Nebraska successfully paddled 38 miles down the Missouri River in an 846-pound hollowed-out pumpkin named “Berta.”
The largest pumpkin pie ever made came from the New Bremen Pumpkinfest in Ohio on September 25, 2010. This Guinness World Record holding pie weighed an astounding 3,699 pounds and measured 20 feet in diameter.
The pie required extraordinary quantities of ingredients:
- 1,212 pounds of canned pumpkin (187 No. 10 cans)
- 2,796 eggs (233 dozen)
- 109 gallons of evaporated milk
- 525 pounds of sugar
- 7 pounds of salt
- 5 pounds of cinnamon
- 3 pounds of pumpkin pie spice
- 440 sheets of dough for the crust
Subscribe to Agritourism Today
