The crane crew is lifting Ruth Abernathy’s pumpkin onto the scale now. The tent has gone quiet, and the overflow lawn is on its feet in front of the big screen.

Abernathy is standing next to weighmaster Hank Oduya with her hands in her pockets. Her estimate is 2,250 pounds. The record to beat is 2,204.

Gus Lindgren’s 1,655-pounder is now third, and his whole family is here to watch the rest. His father, Arne, 88, grew the festival’s first 1,000-pound pumpkin in 1997. His granddaughter, Elsie, 9, planted her first seed this spring.

Dad taught me to grow them big. Elsie’s teaching me to have fun with it again.

Gus Lindgren

Elsie’s pumpkin weighed 38 pounds in the youth division. She has already picked out a bigger patch for next year.

Arturo Salgado’s pumpkin weighed 1,944 pounds, six pounds under his estimate and 260 short of the festival record he set in 2019. It’s still enough for first place, for now.

Place	Grower	Weight
1	Arturo Salgado	1,944 lb
2	Priscilla Nguyen	1,772 lb
3	Gus Lindgren	1,655 lb
4	Tess and Rob Whitfield	1,590 lb
5	Walt Pruitt	1,488 lb

One pumpkin is left: Ruth Abernathy’s.

A Nubian goat named Biscuit slipped out of the 4-H barn just after lunch and spent about 20 minutes touring the fairgrounds.

Volunteers found her beside the weigh tent, eating the decorative hay bales the fire marshal had asked people to stop standing on. Her owner, 14-year-old Jonah Pratt, walked her back to the barn to applause from the overflow lawn.

“She just wanted to see the pumpkins,” he said.

It’s been a tough hour for the tape measure. Both of the next two pumpkins weighed well below what their growers expected:

Grower	Estimate	Weight
Nora Pell	1,350 lb	1,094 lb
Dale Mercer	1,300 lb	1,071 lb

Neither makes the top 10. That leaves two: Arturo Salgado’s, then Ruth Abernathy’s.

If you’ve been following along, you’ve noticed the scale and the estimates don’t always agree. Here’s why.

How growers estimate

Nobody can weigh a 2,000-pound pumpkin in a field. Growers measure it instead: once around the middle, once from stem to blossom end, and once from side to side. They add the three numbers and look up the total on a chart built from years of past weigh-offs.

Why they miss

The chart assumes an average pumpkin. One with thick walls and a small hollow inside weighs more than its measurements suggest, and growers call it “heavy to the chart.” One with thin walls and a big cavity comes in light.

The tape tells you how big it is. Only the scale tells you how much of it is pumpkin and how much of it is air.

Hank Oduya, weighmaster

The lunch rush has hit the food truck row behind the Grange tent. Here are the waits we timed a few minutes ago:

• Mill Creek Creamery: about 10 minutes. The pumpkin-butter swirl is back.
• The Gourd Standard: about 20 minutes for soup in a bread bowl.
• Hollow Log BBQ: about 35 minutes, and the brisket is going fast.
• Fern & Flour: sold out of pumpkin pie by the slice. Apple is still available.

Free water refill stations are by the restrooms and next to the weigh tent entrance.

Organizers say the high school lot filled up a few minutes ago. Overflow parking is open at Bramble Falls Elementary on Elm Street, and shuttles from there now run every 10 minutes instead of every 15.

If you are walking in from downtown, Main Street is still closed to cars between Elm and Church streets until 6 p.m.

The first of the five heavyweights, Luis Ferreira’s entry from Oak Hollow, was estimated at 1,400 pounds. The scale read 1,160.

Ferreira took it in stride. “It looked a lot heavier in my field,” he said, patting the pumpkin as the crane set it down. “Next year I’m building a bigger shade tent.”

At 1,160 pounds, his pumpkin sits 10th on the leaderboard with four left to weigh.

Organizers have opened the overflow lawn beside the weigh tent and set up a big screen for anyone who can’t see the scale. The fire marshal has one request: please stop standing on the hay bales.

While the heavyweights wait their turn, eight regatta crews are scooping out giant pumpkins at the edge of Mill Pond. Tess and Rob Whitfield are hollowing out their 1,590-pounder, weighed just an hour ago, and painting it like a ladybug.

The regatta starts right after the final weigh. Paddlers race 200 yards across the pond, and staying upright is half the battle.

Five pumpkins are left, and they are the reason the bleachers are full. The crane crew has switched to the heavy-lift harness, and weighmaster Hank Oduya has recalibrated the scale.

All eyes are on Ruth Abernathy, 72, a retired high school chemistry teacher whose pumpkin was measured this morning at an estimated 2,250 pounds. The festival record is 2,204 pounds, set in 2019 by Arturo Salgado, who is back this year with an entry estimated at 1,950.

“Estimates are just estimates,” Abernathy said. “The scale is the only thing out here that doesn’t exaggerate.”

Priscilla Nguyen’s second entry weighed 1,772 pounds, the heaviest of the day so far. Here’s the top five with five pumpkins left to weigh:

Place	Grower	Weight
1	Priscilla Nguyen	1,772 lb
2	Gus Lindgren	1,655 lb
3	Tess and Rob Whitfield	1,590 lb
4	Walt Pruitt	1,488 lb
5	Hal and June Varga	1,342 lb

Between weighs, grower Luis Ferreira borrowed the announcer’s microphone, turned to his girlfriend, Hannah Cole, and asked her to marry him in front of his pumpkin and a few thousand strangers.

She said yes. The pumpkin then weighed in at 1,160 pounds, and the couple have named it “Best Man.”

“We met at this festival five years ago, in line for pie,” Cole said. “It felt right.”

• 41 pumpkins entered, the most in the weigh-off’s 38 years
• 24 weighed so far
• 9 first-time growers
• 1 disqualification
• 2,204 pounds: the festival record, set by Arturo Salgado in 2019
• About 9,000 visitors so far, according to organizers

Judges in the Grange tent tasted 27 pies before settling on Evelyn Marsh’s pumpkin chiffon with a gingersnap crust. It’s her first win in 11 tries.

“I changed one thing this year: more ginger,” she said. She declined to say how much.

It has been a good day for the Marsh family: her grandson Theo won the mini-pumpkin race this morning. Second place went to a maple pumpkin pie from the Bramble Falls High School culinary club, which is selling slices at its booth until they run out.

Nine pumpkins have been weighed so far. Here’s the early top five:

Place	Grower	Weight
1	Walt Pruitt	1,488 lb
2	Hal and June Varga	1,342 lb
3	Priscilla Nguyen	1,301 lb
4	Ben Adair	1,210 lb
5	Denise Farrow	1,025 lb

The heaviest entries, including Ruth Abernathy’s much-watched pumpkin, won’t weigh until early afternoon.