By Will Grunewald
Photos by Benjamin Williamson
From our October 2023 issue
In the 1980s, Charlie Lopresti grew pumpkins in the garden with his dad. Their biggest was about 200 pounds. A couple of decades later, Lopresti and his wife settled in rural Buxton, with plenty of yard for planting. In 2016, he set a goal: to grow a 2,000-pound pumpkin. Lopresti, who’s chief meteorologist at Portland’s CBS and Fox affiliates, came close in 2019. Last year, he had another promising candidate. “I didn’t go to the beach once all summer,” he says. “I was busy in the pumpkin patch, out there on my hands and knees, spraying fertilizers and fish emulsions. It’s a weird obsession.”
Good soil and strong pedigree are prerequisite — growers often share seeds. When the plant’s female flower blooms, Lopresti hand-delivers pollen from the plant’s male flower, then ties the female flower shut to keep out free-ranging pollinators. Weather is also key. A heating cable in the soil combats the cold. A wind fence defends against storm projectiles. Too much rain invites fungal infections. Too much sun damages the flesh. Despite so many hazards, Lopresti’s pumpkin gained about 54 pounds per day in a two week period last year. And at the Damariscotta Pumpkinfest & Regatta, he came out on top: 2,080 pounds, only about 40 shy of the state record.
This year, Lopresti took a break from jumbo pumpkins and hasn’t made up his mind about the future, but he doesn’t talk as if he’s hanging up his fish-emulsion sprayer forever. “This is one of the silliest things,” he says. “We have so much structure in our lives — going to work, paying bills. Sometimes, you just have to do something that makes no sense.”
Catch Lopresti emceeing pumpkin weigh-ins on October 1 at the Louis Doe Home Center, in Newcastle, for this year’s Damariscotta Pumpkinfest & Regatta, which takes place the following weekend.
