Did you know…

• Pumpkins are 90% water.
• Depending on who you ask, pumpkins can be considered both fruits and vegetables!
  • If you were to ask a botanist, they would reply “fruit” because pumpkins, along with tomatoes, cucumbers, and green beans, all have seeds.
  • If you were to ask a chef, on the other hand, they would reply “vegetable” because they are part of a leafy plant consumed by humans.
• Every continent except for Antarctica has climates capable of producing pumpkins.
• Pumpkins were once recommended for removing freckles and curing snake bites.
• The Native Americans used pumpkin seeds for food and medicine.
• In early colonial times, pumpkins were used as an ingredient for the crust of pies, not the filling.
• More pumpkins are grown in Morton, Illinois than anywhere else in the world – Nestle has a pumpkin processing plant here that generates 90% of all the canned pumpkin consumed in the United States.
• In 2008, the major pumpkin-producing states in the U.S. produced 1.1 billion pounds of pumpkins valued at $141 million!
• As of 2010, the largest pumpkin ever grown weighed in at 1,810.5 pounds, presented by Chris Stevens of New Richmond, WI at the Stillwater Harvest Fest in Minnesota.
  • For comparison, your average car typically weighs between 2,000 & 3,000 pounds!
• As of 2010, the largest pumpkin pie ever made was over twenty feet in diameter and weighed 3,699 pounds! Created in New Bremen, OH, it used 187 #10 cans of pumpkin, 233 dozen eggs, 525 pounds of sugar, and 17.5 pounds of cinnamon and pumpkin pie spices.  When it finally finished cooling, it fed a crowd of 5,000 hungry pumpkin fans!
• Pumpkin Chucking is a popular competition in which pumpkins are hurled through the air using some sort of mechanical means. Yours truly remembers Pumpkin Chucking from his senior year of high school when he helped build a catapult for physics class that ended up being pretty awesome.

Got a fun pumpkin factoid of your own?  Drop me a line and share it with me!