October 29, 2024 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in 2017, Rhode Islander Joe Jutras broke the record for the largest giant green squash ever grown- it came in at 2,118 lbs. Today Joe shares all that goes into growing these giant fruits.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to Ouramerican Stories dot com.
There's some of our favorites. And today we have a
story from Rhode Islander Joe Jutris. Joe is a retired
cabinet maker and since his retirement, he has dedicated most
(00:31):
of his time to growing giant fruit and vegetable. In
twenty seventeen, he broke the record for the largest green
squash ever grown, coming in at twenty one hundred and
eighteen pounds. He hears Joe with his story.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I've been growing giant vegetables now for the last twenty
five years. Got started years ago, just by accident, started
growing vegetables in my backyard. I threw in a giant
pumpkin seed. I grew it too, one hundred and twenty
four pounds, and from then on I was hooked. A
(01:10):
couple of years later, I got hooked up with a
gentleman here in Rhode Island. His name is John Castellucci.
He's like the godfather of pumpkin growing here in New England.
He started in the early nineties. He had great success
real gentleman helped anybody that wanted to learn how to
grow pumpkins. So my friend Stees Fury and I spent
(01:31):
a lot of time in his house just drinking some
beers and learned how to grow pumpkins. And from then
on we just got hooked and enjoyed growing. Met people
from all over the world.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
This hobby attracts people from all strains of life, from
cabinet makers to scientists. There seems to be an addictive
quality to growing these giant fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
It's remarkable how many people you meet that all have
the same interest of growing fruit and enjoy being outside
growing these large vegetables. It's been one of the best
pots I know. My wife really enjoys it. We have
get together as we have cruises that we go on
with pumpkin people. Very competitive. But then again, it's such
(02:18):
a long season. We start these fruit in beginning of
April and we're not finished a lot of these way
offs until October. So you know, you've got a fruit
on the hook for like one hundred hundred and ten
and twenty days. That's a long time to have a
fruit being healthy, and a lot of things can happen.
A lot of weather related problems you can run into,
and bugs and diseases. It takes a lot to get
(02:42):
a pump into the finish line. So when we go
to these way offs, we're all happy for each other
just to see everybody getting a fruit there, and a
lot of people grow multiple fruit just so that you
do have a fruit at the wayoff time. Hopefully to
get the full advantage of your growing season, you want
to try to get these in probably about three or
(03:03):
four weeks before your last frost, which means you have
to grow them in a greenhouse. We use heating cables
to wall of the soil, we use lights, we use
like a small greenhouse. My greenhouses are like a five
by seven. After we've got the pumpkin going, i'd say
we've grown them in that greenhouse for probably four or
five weeks. It's probably about the first week of May
(03:25):
by the time we take it out here in Rhode
Island and the race is on. We're growing these plants.
You're trying to set this fruit out on the main
vine probably ten to twelve feet at least, preferably fourteen
or sixteen feet is even better. You've got probably ten
side vines on either side of the fruit, and your
plants probably five hundred square feet four hundred square feet
(03:49):
at pollination time, and by that time your fruit at
twenty days old is really signing to put on the weight.
You can be putting anything on, like maybe thirty pounds
a day at at twenty days old, and by twenty
five days old you could be putting thirty pounds on,
and by forty days you could be putting forty or
fifty pounds on if you really got one hooked up.
(04:12):
I was fortunate enough to in two thousand and six
grow a world record long good Actually, the very first
time I tried, I grew a world record. And the
year after that, two thousand and seven, I had started
a new garden. I grew the world record pumpkins, and
ever since then I was trying to grow the world's
(04:32):
largest green squash. It's a different It's similar to a pumpkin,
but the color is different, just a little different. In
growing them, the earlier ones back in two thousand and seven,
two thousand and eight, they were harder to grow. I
think what happened the gene pool so closely related that
they had a lot of problems with pollinations, and there
(04:53):
weren't as many people growing them. There's like nine times
more people growing giant pumpkins than there are squash.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
This hobby of giant fruit growing turns out to be
quite the science. But a little over the last decade
some people wanted to make their chances of growing a
giant green squash a little higher, and after a few
years of cross breeding squashes and pumpkins, there are a
lot more people growing giant green squash. Part of the
reason this type of fruit is so difficult to grow
(05:22):
is that pumpkins and the color orange are actually dominant.
So the growers will take the seeds from the squash
pumpkin hybrid and plant multiple seeds and hopes to grow
a green squash in which they have a one and
four chance of getting one. These giant fruits that are
being grown have gone through lots of breeding and pollinating
seasons in order to become these world record breaking two
(05:45):
thousand pound monster produce. Before these large fruits are brought
to scale, the growers try to estimate just how much
they will weigh.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
We have a way of measuring these fruits, so we
have an idea how heavy they are I call ott
top measurement where you take a circumference measurement side to
side measurement front the back measurement. You add them all up,
and you know, he may come up to four hundred
and eighty five hundred inches, and you put that measurement
up against the chot, and the chot is changing all
(06:18):
the time depending on how heavy the pumpkins get. And
he'll give you an estimate of how much you pumpkins.
You weigh by the cubic inches of your pumpkin, so
you have an idea how many pounds is growing Pretty
exciting when you can gain three hundred pounds a week,
two hundred and eighty pounds a week.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And you've been listening to Joe Jutras telling the story
about his retirement hobby which has grown into a pretty
serious hobby and a world record breaking hobby. And my goodness,
what it takes to grow one of these monsters. How
complex it is, all the exigencies of surviving through one
hundred and twenty day growth season, and that's a long
(07:03):
time to get from beginning to end. As he put it,
it takes a lot to get a pumpkin that size
to the finish line when we come back more of
Joe Jutris's story, the Giant Pumpkin and squash Grower from
Rhode Island. Here on our American Stories Folks, if you
(07:31):
love the great American stories we tell and love America
like we do, we're asking you to become a part
of the our American Stories family. If you agree that
America is a good and great country, please make a donation.
A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents
is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to
our American Stories dot com now and go to the
(07:52):
donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American Stories and with Joe Jutras, who holds the
(08:14):
world record for growing the largest green squash. He's been
sharing with us all that goes into growing these giant
fruits and vegetables. Let's return to Joe.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
You can actually see that pumpkin growing, especially at the
beginning between day twenty to day forty. It changes the
shape daily and triples, quadruples and size in that amount
of time. Once they start getting bigger, you know, every
inch is like ten, eleven, twelve pounds, so they don't
change as much like anybody else. They get more cracks
(08:53):
and age spots and just a voute and they tag
the seemed to gain more weight as they get older too,
just like anybody else. You know, they start packing on
the weight, just very rewarning to see a fruit grow
and get it to the scale. And you know, watch
all the people have their pumpkin come to the scale
(09:15):
and they're thinking it's you know, say thousand pounds, and
it ends up being eleven hundred and fifty pounds. Well,
they grew quite a bit over the scale. You know,
they're double digit heavy, so that's great. They are justice
chat all the time so that they're either five percent
over a five percent below, trying to be as accurate
(09:36):
as they can.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
In Joejutri's first attempt to grow his world record breaking
green squash, he grew twelve plants and out of the twelve,
only one was green and it grew to a mere
two hundred and fifty two pounds. But in twenty seventeen,
when he tried again with a different seed, it brought
him his world record breaking green squash of two thousand,
(09:59):
one hundred and eight eighteen pounds.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The year I grew the world record squash. You know,
you have a very good idea, you've got a good
one growing. And that same year Scott Holbit grew that
same eighteen forty four seed. So we both had one going.
And you know, your friends, you talk with one another
and said, gee, how you doing, Scott doing? You know,
close to nineteen oh a pounds. You're saying, you're trying
(10:24):
to do the math. All right, mine's mine's close to
two thousand pounds. I think I taped out measuring like
two thousand and nine pounds. So if he's taking nineteen hundred,
I go a light, he goes heavy. You know, either
one of us could win well at the end of it.
I won five percent heavy, he won five percent light.
So that's a big difference.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
In twenty seventeen, after a long season of hard work
growing these giant produce, the weigh and day arrived and
getting these fruits to weigh in is quite the process
and takes a team effort.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
It's called fat Friday. The day before our way off
is usually on a Saturday. We help each other out.
There's four or five guys get together and we have
a tripod with to honess on that goes around the
bottle and the pumpkin. You have a chain fall and
you be able to lift the pumpkin up by this
harness from the tripod without actually haven't lift any weight whatsoever.
(11:20):
And these fruit now are so big that you have
to have a trailer because they won't fit in the
back of a pickup truck any longer. So we pick
it up in the air, we push the trailer underneath,
we let it down, hook it up to the truck
and we pull it out. Now we bring it to
the farm. We have this way off in Warren, Rhode Island,
verishoes farm. We set up things for the following day.
(11:44):
We usually wait till the end. We weigh the biggest
ones last by the measurement, go by how it goes.
And just that day I wonder world recorded. I was
fortunate that had the biggest fruit there and it ended
up weighing the heaviest. I was very surprised that it
went five percent heavy, because you know, I was just
hoping for something that could beat eighteen forty four, which
(12:05):
was the world record. So to really come in twenty
one eighteen. It was a dream come true, that's for sure.
To say the least, it's going to be a hot
record to beat because that was that was a very
very large fruit. Even nowadays that at the time that
(12:26):
was the thirteenth largest fruit ever grown. Pumpkins and squash.
Now since then, there's probably about another thirty or forty
ones that are as big or bigger than that, but
there's not really any green squash that have come close
to that other than my nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
There's no doubt seeing these giant pumpkins or squash on
the road would be a sight to see.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Well, the funny part of this is when you're going
down the road, because some of these wayoffs we go
to are in upstate Connecticut, there the New York a lot,
and you're on ninety five and you've got people taking
pictures and hanging out the wind is and putting their
thumbs up and almost running off the road. That's the
scary part is when you got people who are not
(13:12):
watching where they're going, and they're you know, they're really
excited and taking pictures and the beeping their horns and
everyone enjoys a lodge pumpkin going down the road. Some
people probably have never seen it before and they're really
in awe when they do see it. So that's the
pot that's exciting. And you get to the way off
and you have families and kids that look at it
(13:34):
and it's like a Christmas tree, a big pumpkin, you know,
it's it's something everybody enjoys looking at. There's a pumpkin
organization called the GPC and they're something like a government
of the pumpkin growers.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
The GPC is the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, the organization that
makes sure everyone is on the same page it comes
to growing and measuring these giant fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
So it's very important that we do have a GPC
to control the punkin community and that everybody is judged fairly.
And we have a yearly convention that's put on by
the GPC, and that's a good time where everyone gets together.
It's usually about two or three hundred people from all
(14:24):
over the world. They give out awards and usually the
growers who grow the largest squash or fruit or vegetables,
depending on what it is. They do PowerPoint presentation and
everyone learns from you know what the newest strategies were
(14:45):
how they did it and what not to do? What
to do? It's just as important. It's what to do
is what not to do? What you can learn from
all other people's mistakes, you certainly don't want to make
them all yourself. The best thing about the this hobby
is the friends that you meet. I think it's you know,
I enjoy fishing too, and I've bet a bunch of
fishing buddies. I really enjoy fishing where you know, I
(15:08):
can't wait to talk about the fish we card and
how to catch him and what to you use. It's
basically the same thing when you're growing giant pumpkins. What
are you using the ferilized we're you using the spray?
What are you using for a bunch of side? What
do you think of this seed? What do you think
of that seed? What are you growing next year? How'd
you do it? It's just really a lot of friendship too.
(15:30):
It's not only the work of growing them, it's people
you meet and the friends you acquire over the years,
just so much fun.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Who Jutrius is now in his sixties and he has
no intention of stopping his hobby anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
You know, God willing if I'm still fit in this
sport really really keeps you moving. You know, you're out
there first thing, crack of dawn working on these plants,
stretching and moving and up and down. It's quite a
bit of physical work to it. I'd like to do
it as long as I can. I know my buddy Eddie,
who I'm helping now, he's eighty three, and he likes
(16:08):
growing these fruit as much as anybody I know, and
he just can't wait to get up in the morning
to get out there and work on him. Granted that,
you know, at eighty three you're not able to do
it as well as you can at forty or fifty
or sixty, But he still still does a heck of
a job at it. I know it's not for everybody.
It's quite a bit of work. Not everybody has to
take it quite as serious as a competitive pumpin girl.
(16:32):
Just to grow one in your backyard, to have a
two or three hundred pounds around your step is a
great achievement over the summer, and it's very attainable. Not
with the seeds we have. Just about everybody has room
for a ten by fifteen foot God, and you could
easily grow two or three five hundred pound fruit without
a heck of a lot of work, I think.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And a great job is always by faith. And Robbie
telling the story of Joe Jutrice. Goodness, what a passion
he has, And my goodness, how many of us have
a world record in anything, And if it's the squash
world record, so be it. Twenty one hundred and eighteen
pounds done in twenty seventeen, and Joe's pride and joy,
(17:14):
but still out there competing and wanting to win, and
most importantly, sharing his hobby with pals. And that's what
it really is all about. We all have those hobbies,
and what really brings us together is more than the
passion for the thing, but the people we meet and
the friendships we make. Joe Jutris's story here on our
American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to Ouramerican Stories dot com.
There's some of our favorites. And today we have a
story from Rhode Islander Joe Jutris. Joe is a retired
cabinet maker and since his retirement, he has dedicated most
(00:31):
of his time to growing giant fruit and vegetable. In
twenty seventeen, he broke the record for the largest green
squash ever grown, coming in at twenty one hundred and
eighteen pounds. He hears Joe with his story.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I've been growing giant vegetables now for the last twenty
five years. Got started years ago, just by accident, started
growing vegetables in my backyard. I threw in a giant
pumpkin seed. I grew it too, one hundred and twenty
four pounds, and from then on I was hooked. A
(01:10):
couple of years later, I got hooked up with a
gentleman here in Rhode Island. His name is John Castellucci.
He's like the godfather of pumpkin growing here in New England.
He started in the early nineties. He had great success
real gentleman helped anybody that wanted to learn how to
grow pumpkins. So my friend Stees Fury and I spent
(01:31):
a lot of time in his house just drinking some
beers and learned how to grow pumpkins. And from then
on we just got hooked and enjoyed growing. Met people
from all over the world.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
This hobby attracts people from all strains of life, from
cabinet makers to scientists. There seems to be an addictive
quality to growing these giant fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
It's remarkable how many people you meet that all have
the same interest of growing fruit and enjoy being outside
growing these large vegetables. It's been one of the best
pots I know. My wife really enjoys it. We have
get together as we have cruises that we go on
with pumpkin people. Very competitive. But then again, it's such
(02:18):
a long season. We start these fruit in beginning of
April and we're not finished a lot of these way
offs until October. So you know, you've got a fruit
on the hook for like one hundred hundred and ten
and twenty days. That's a long time to have a
fruit being healthy, and a lot of things can happen.
A lot of weather related problems you can run into,
and bugs and diseases. It takes a lot to get
(02:42):
a pump into the finish line. So when we go
to these way offs, we're all happy for each other
just to see everybody getting a fruit there, and a
lot of people grow multiple fruit just so that you
do have a fruit at the wayoff time. Hopefully to
get the full advantage of your growing season, you want
to try to get these in probably about three or
(03:03):
four weeks before your last frost, which means you have
to grow them in a greenhouse. We use heating cables
to wall of the soil, we use lights, we use
like a small greenhouse. My greenhouses are like a five
by seven. After we've got the pumpkin going, i'd say
we've grown them in that greenhouse for probably four or
five weeks. It's probably about the first week of May
(03:25):
by the time we take it out here in Rhode
Island and the race is on. We're growing these plants.
You're trying to set this fruit out on the main
vine probably ten to twelve feet at least, preferably fourteen
or sixteen feet is even better. You've got probably ten
side vines on either side of the fruit, and your
plants probably five hundred square feet four hundred square feet
(03:49):
at pollination time, and by that time your fruit at
twenty days old is really signing to put on the weight.
You can be putting anything on, like maybe thirty pounds
a day at at twenty days old, and by twenty
five days old you could be putting thirty pounds on,
and by forty days you could be putting forty or
fifty pounds on if you really got one hooked up.
(04:12):
I was fortunate enough to in two thousand and six
grow a world record long good Actually, the very first
time I tried, I grew a world record. And the
year after that, two thousand and seven, I had started
a new garden. I grew the world record pumpkins, and
ever since then I was trying to grow the world's
(04:32):
largest green squash. It's a different It's similar to a pumpkin,
but the color is different, just a little different. In
growing them, the earlier ones back in two thousand and seven,
two thousand and eight, they were harder to grow. I
think what happened the gene pool so closely related that
they had a lot of problems with pollinations, and there
(04:53):
weren't as many people growing them. There's like nine times
more people growing giant pumpkins than there are squash.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
This hobby of giant fruit growing turns out to be
quite the science. But a little over the last decade
some people wanted to make their chances of growing a
giant green squash a little higher, and after a few
years of cross breeding squashes and pumpkins, there are a
lot more people growing giant green squash. Part of the
reason this type of fruit is so difficult to grow
(05:22):
is that pumpkins and the color orange are actually dominant.
So the growers will take the seeds from the squash
pumpkin hybrid and plant multiple seeds and hopes to grow
a green squash in which they have a one and
four chance of getting one. These giant fruits that are
being grown have gone through lots of breeding and pollinating
seasons in order to become these world record breaking two
(05:45):
thousand pound monster produce. Before these large fruits are brought
to scale, the growers try to estimate just how much
they will weigh.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
We have a way of measuring these fruits, so we
have an idea how heavy they are I call ott
top measurement where you take a circumference measurement side to
side measurement front the back measurement. You add them all up,
and you know, he may come up to four hundred
and eighty five hundred inches, and you put that measurement
up against the chot, and the chot is changing all
(06:18):
the time depending on how heavy the pumpkins get. And
he'll give you an estimate of how much you pumpkins.
You weigh by the cubic inches of your pumpkin, so
you have an idea how many pounds is growing Pretty
exciting when you can gain three hundred pounds a week,
two hundred and eighty pounds a week.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And you've been listening to Joe Jutras telling the story
about his retirement hobby which has grown into a pretty
serious hobby and a world record breaking hobby. And my goodness,
what it takes to grow one of these monsters. How
complex it is, all the exigencies of surviving through one
hundred and twenty day growth season, and that's a long
(07:03):
time to get from beginning to end. As he put it,
it takes a lot to get a pumpkin that size
to the finish line when we come back more of
Joe Jutris's story, the Giant Pumpkin and squash Grower from
Rhode Island. Here on our American Stories Folks, if you
(07:31):
love the great American stories we tell and love America
like we do, we're asking you to become a part
of the our American Stories family. If you agree that
America is a good and great country, please make a donation.
A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents
is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to
our American Stories dot com now and go to the
(07:52):
donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American Stories and with Joe Jutras, who holds the
(08:14):
world record for growing the largest green squash. He's been
sharing with us all that goes into growing these giant
fruits and vegetables. Let's return to Joe.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
You can actually see that pumpkin growing, especially at the
beginning between day twenty to day forty. It changes the
shape daily and triples, quadruples and size in that amount
of time. Once they start getting bigger, you know, every
inch is like ten, eleven, twelve pounds, so they don't
change as much like anybody else. They get more cracks
(08:53):
and age spots and just a voute and they tag
the seemed to gain more weight as they get older too,
just like anybody else. You know, they start packing on
the weight, just very rewarning to see a fruit grow
and get it to the scale. And you know, watch
all the people have their pumpkin come to the scale
(09:15):
and they're thinking it's you know, say thousand pounds, and
it ends up being eleven hundred and fifty pounds. Well,
they grew quite a bit over the scale. You know,
they're double digit heavy, so that's great. They are justice
chat all the time so that they're either five percent
over a five percent below, trying to be as accurate
(09:36):
as they can.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
In Joejutri's first attempt to grow his world record breaking
green squash, he grew twelve plants and out of the twelve,
only one was green and it grew to a mere
two hundred and fifty two pounds. But in twenty seventeen,
when he tried again with a different seed, it brought
him his world record breaking green squash of two thousand,
(09:59):
one hundred and eight eighteen pounds.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
The year I grew the world record squash. You know,
you have a very good idea, you've got a good
one growing. And that same year Scott Holbit grew that
same eighteen forty four seed. So we both had one going.
And you know, your friends, you talk with one another
and said, gee, how you doing, Scott doing? You know,
close to nineteen oh a pounds. You're saying, you're trying
(10:24):
to do the math. All right, mine's mine's close to
two thousand pounds. I think I taped out measuring like
two thousand and nine pounds. So if he's taking nineteen hundred,
I go a light, he goes heavy. You know, either
one of us could win well at the end of it.
I won five percent heavy, he won five percent light.
So that's a big difference.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
In twenty seventeen, after a long season of hard work
growing these giant produce, the weigh and day arrived and
getting these fruits to weigh in is quite the process
and takes a team effort.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
It's called fat Friday. The day before our way off
is usually on a Saturday. We help each other out.
There's four or five guys get together and we have
a tripod with to honess on that goes around the
bottle and the pumpkin. You have a chain fall and
you be able to lift the pumpkin up by this
harness from the tripod without actually haven't lift any weight whatsoever.
(11:20):
And these fruit now are so big that you have
to have a trailer because they won't fit in the
back of a pickup truck any longer. So we pick
it up in the air, we push the trailer underneath,
we let it down, hook it up to the truck
and we pull it out. Now we bring it to
the farm. We have this way off in Warren, Rhode Island,
verishoes farm. We set up things for the following day.
(11:44):
We usually wait till the end. We weigh the biggest
ones last by the measurement, go by how it goes.
And just that day I wonder world recorded. I was
fortunate that had the biggest fruit there and it ended
up weighing the heaviest. I was very surprised that it
went five percent heavy, because you know, I was just
hoping for something that could beat eighteen forty four, which
(12:05):
was the world record. So to really come in twenty
one eighteen. It was a dream come true, that's for sure.
To say the least, it's going to be a hot
record to beat because that was that was a very
very large fruit. Even nowadays that at the time that
(12:26):
was the thirteenth largest fruit ever grown. Pumpkins and squash.
Now since then, there's probably about another thirty or forty
ones that are as big or bigger than that, but
there's not really any green squash that have come close
to that other than my nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
There's no doubt seeing these giant pumpkins or squash on
the road would be a sight to see.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Well, the funny part of this is when you're going
down the road, because some of these wayoffs we go
to are in upstate Connecticut, there the New York a lot,
and you're on ninety five and you've got people taking
pictures and hanging out the wind is and putting their
thumbs up and almost running off the road. That's the
scary part is when you got people who are not
(13:12):
watching where they're going, and they're you know, they're really
excited and taking pictures and the beeping their horns and
everyone enjoys a lodge pumpkin going down the road. Some
people probably have never seen it before and they're really
in awe when they do see it. So that's the
pot that's exciting. And you get to the way off
and you have families and kids that look at it
(13:34):
and it's like a Christmas tree, a big pumpkin, you know,
it's it's something everybody enjoys looking at. There's a pumpkin
organization called the GPC and they're something like a government
of the pumpkin growers.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
The GPC is the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, the organization that
makes sure everyone is on the same page it comes
to growing and measuring these giant fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
So it's very important that we do have a GPC
to control the punkin community and that everybody is judged fairly.
And we have a yearly convention that's put on by
the GPC, and that's a good time where everyone gets together.
It's usually about two or three hundred people from all
(14:24):
over the world. They give out awards and usually the
growers who grow the largest squash or fruit or vegetables,
depending on what it is. They do PowerPoint presentation and
everyone learns from you know what the newest strategies were
(14:45):
how they did it and what not to do? What
to do? It's just as important. It's what to do
is what not to do? What you can learn from
all other people's mistakes, you certainly don't want to make
them all yourself. The best thing about the this hobby
is the friends that you meet. I think it's you know,
I enjoy fishing too, and I've bet a bunch of
fishing buddies. I really enjoy fishing where you know, I
(15:08):
can't wait to talk about the fish we card and
how to catch him and what to you use. It's
basically the same thing when you're growing giant pumpkins. What
are you using the ferilized we're you using the spray?
What are you using for a bunch of side? What
do you think of this seed? What do you think
of that seed? What are you growing next year? How'd
you do it? It's just really a lot of friendship too.
(15:30):
It's not only the work of growing them, it's people
you meet and the friends you acquire over the years,
just so much fun.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Who Jutrius is now in his sixties and he has
no intention of stopping his hobby anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
You know, God willing if I'm still fit in this
sport really really keeps you moving. You know, you're out
there first thing, crack of dawn working on these plants,
stretching and moving and up and down. It's quite a
bit of physical work to it. I'd like to do
it as long as I can. I know my buddy Eddie,
who I'm helping now, he's eighty three, and he likes
(16:08):
growing these fruit as much as anybody I know, and
he just can't wait to get up in the morning
to get out there and work on him. Granted that,
you know, at eighty three you're not able to do
it as well as you can at forty or fifty
or sixty, But he still still does a heck of
a job at it. I know it's not for everybody.
It's quite a bit of work. Not everybody has to
take it quite as serious as a competitive pumpin girl.
(16:32):
Just to grow one in your backyard, to have a
two or three hundred pounds around your step is a
great achievement over the summer, and it's very attainable. Not
with the seeds we have. Just about everybody has room
for a ten by fifteen foot God, and you could
easily grow two or three five hundred pound fruit without
a heck of a lot of work, I think.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And a great job is always by faith. And Robbie
telling the story of Joe Jutrice. Goodness, what a passion
he has, And my goodness, how many of us have
a world record in anything, And if it's the squash
world record, so be it. Twenty one hundred and eighteen
pounds done in twenty seventeen, and Joe's pride and joy,
(17:14):
but still out there competing and wanting to win, and
most importantly, sharing his hobby with pals. And that's what
it really is all about. We all have those hobbies,
and what really brings us together is more than the
passion for the thing, but the people we meet and
the friendships we make. Joe Jutris's story here on our
American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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