McCaslin announces giant produce weigh-off Sept. 12 at Hancock County Fairgrounds

Nick McCaslin of Hawesville has announced a giant fruit and vegetable weigh-off on Saturday, Sept. 12, in the main pavilion at the Hancock County Fairgrounds. He is a welder and award-winning gardener, who specializes in growing exceptionally large produce in greenhouses at his family’s farm.

McCaslin is a Great Pumpkin Commonwealth (GPC) board member and serves as the representative for the Southeast. For the last several years, he and the other members of the Kentucky Giant Pumpkin Growers Club have held giant fruit and vegetable weigh-off contests at Roberts Family Farm in Brandenburg. They have now decided to relocate the event to Hancock County.

Some of the people who started the Meade County contest have retired from the hobby, which led to McCaslin taking on a larger role in organizing it despite living in Hawesville and having to haul equipment back and forth to Brandenburg, he said. He added that he wanted to move the weigh-off to Hancock County both to simplify logistics and to bring tourism dollars home.

“More than anything, I wanted to let the folks here in our county see what it’s all about,” McCaslin said. “It’s very interesting to see these giant pumpkins and watermelons, and all the other cool things we have to offer. It may get some younger people interested not just in growing giant fruits and vegetables, but in agriculture in general and the science that goes with it.”

This year’s weigh-off has been scheduled with the Hancock County Fair Board and is booked for the next five years at the Hancock County Fairgrounds. McCaslin said the plan is to add another five years after that, and the event will be held on the second Saturday of September each year.

He said whether you are an experienced gardener, just starting out, or simply want to watch the contests, you are encouraged to attend.

“The more people, the better,” he said. “We have people who are first-time exhibitors. When you get there, we will show you how to register; it’s super simple. We haven’t gotten this set in stone yet, but typically we have a drop-off time between 9 a.m. and noon. Starting at 1 p.m., we’ll begin the weigh-off, which tends to last two or three hours total, depending on how many entries we have.”

For this first year, he said, he mainly wants the community to show up, support the event and see how it works.

“Hopefully, with the help of the Hancock County Tourism Board and the Hancock County Chamber of Commerce, we can turn this into a cool event and add something to the weigh-off to get people more interested to come there and send their dollars to Hancock County,” McCaslin said.

The contest will be held in the pavilion where the pageants are staged during the Hancock County Fair.

“If you are a first-time grower who doesn’t know where to take your produce, you can go to gpc1.org,” he said. “There’s a drop-down on the page that asks where you are from and pulls up a map with the weigh-off sites closest to you. If you’re in southern Indiana, for example, it will show weigh-offs within a few hours of you.”

He originally discovered the Brandenburg weigh-off through the GPC website.

“That is how it all happened for me,” he said. “We aren’t necessarily starting anything new; we’re just moving venues from Brandenburg to Hancock County. The Kentucky Giant Pumpkin Growers Board decided it. The weigh-off site registration ends May 15, and after that the website should be updated so you can see where every site is in the world and decide where you want to go.”

The Kentucky Giant Pumpkin Growers private Facebook group has a lot of information. Those interested can request to join, and he said they will add you.

“It has a lot of information, not just about the weigh-off, but grower information and how to grow,” he said. “I have two greenhouses. Typically, my dad, Jack McCaslin, and I grow tomatoes to sell out of one of them. The other greenhouse is where I grow my giant watermelons. This year, we’ve decided that instead of tomatoes, I’m going to attempt to grow three giant pumpkins in one greenhouse, and in the other one I’m going to grow a giant watermelon.”

He has been entering his giant produce in the Hancock County Fair every year since about 2019, when he brought a giant pumpkin weighing 1,270 pounds and a 202-pound watermelon.

“I have supported it and been a part of it ever since,” McCaslin said.

He explained that contests like the one he is bringing to the Hancock County Fairgrounds are GPC-sanctioned events, meaning they follow standard rules and procedures. As GPC representative for the Southeast, covering everything from Virginia down to Texas, he oversees about a dozen weigh-off sites in his region and is part of a network of roughly 130 sites worldwide.

“We’ve had as many as 13 states come to this one weigh-off,” he said. “We have folks who come from New York and Pennsylvania. We’ve had them come from as far as Kansas. They come from all over the country to this contest. When you come to a GPC-sanctioned event, it is an even playing field for everyone.”

Event categories include the giant pumpkin, which he said is usually the most popular, as well as the giant green squash, which must be entirely green. Another is the vegetable marrow, a type of summer squash closely related to zucchini.

“Then we have the watermelon category, which is my favorite,” he said. “We also have a couple different gourd categories. One of them is called a bushel gourd, which is basically a big round gourd. We have field pumpkins, which are jack o’ lantern-style, a tomato category, and something called a long gourd, which is the only one not measured by sheer weight; it’s measured by length.”

He said there are about eight GPC representatives in the United States, including one for the Northeast and one on the West Coast. Often called the “Super Bowl” of pumpkin contests, the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California, draws top growers from across the country.

There are also GPC representatives in Europe, Asia and Canada, for a total of about 11 worldwide, he said. The Great Pumpkin Farm’s World Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Clarence, New York, draws contenders from around the United States and Canada and pays up to $15,000 for a world-record pumpkin.

State and regional contests are held at many fairs. Along with the GPC website, BigPumpkins.com publishes annual lists of sanctioned weigh-offs with locations and dates.

“There is a handful of us who all work together to make this local weigh-off work,” he said. “All of these weigh-offs are run by clubs. The GPC just oversees that we all follow the same rules and regulations to make it an even and fair playing field for everyone.”

Since 2019, McCaslin has entered his giant produce in the Kentucky State Fair and has won many awards, including for a watermelon weighing about 258 pounds. Five of his watermelons have topped 300 pounds. In addition to the 1,270-pound pumpkin, he raised one that weighed 1,045 pounds and has twice held the world record for cantaloupe. He was also named GPC Grower of the Year for giant watermelons and estimates he has competed in about eight different states.

McCaslin has worked at Southwire Rod and Cable in Hawesville for almost 15 years and is a maintenance mechanic and welder. He says he simply likes growing record-breaking giant produce and competing as a hobby and enjoys teaching others about the science behind it.

“Growing up, my dad always had a garden,” he said. “Getting out in the garden wasn’t really my favorite thing to do, but I liked the reward as far as eating out of the garden; that was always good. I played competitive softball for several years, and then it got to the point that I didn’t want to play softball as much because my body didn’t agree with playing competitively anymore. So I wanted to find a way to still be competitive and got involved in growing giant fruits and vegetables. Out of all the sports I’ve played in my life, growing these giant fruits and vegetables is the most competitive thing I’ve ever done.”

“When I first started, all I could think about was trying to grow a big pumpkin, watermelon or cantaloupe. I never looked any further into it other than wanting to figure out a way to grow the biggest one possible. In reality, there is a lot more to it than just putting a seed in the ground and hoping for the best; that’s where a lot of the science came into this.”

“When I got more into the science aspect of it, that became just as much my passion as seeing the giant pumpkin or watermelon at the very end of the season, because the science was so challenging to me. As a ninth-grade student, sitting in Ms. Melissa Wallace’s biology class, if you were to ask her right now what kind of student I was, she would laugh at you. And then knowing now that I go around the world and speak about biology and teach biology at a very high level, I would say Ms. Wallace would have a hard time believing that. It applied to me because if you want to do something bad enough you will do whatever it takes, even if it means you have to read a chemistry book or a biology book, and go buy a microscope and sit in your living room and look at soil samples for hours on end.”

McCaslin graduated from Hancock County High School in 2010. He said he was inspired by several different teachers there, including Josh Smith, the HCHS agriculture teacher and Future Farmers of America advisor. He took Smith’s ag classes and was a member of FFA.

“I really latched on to him and learned a lot from him,” McCaslin said. “Now I’m using a lot of the stuff he taught me in ag class. We had a school garden back then and did some gardening at the school.”

His venture of diving deeper and seeking broader knowledge took him to the Hancock County Public Libraries first, where he checked out books and read everything he could find on the subject.

“I also had a mentor,” he said. “His name was Frank Mudd of Flaherty, Kentucky in Meade County. He sent me down the rabbit hole. He shared seeds with me and knowledge. Frank was one of the best watermelon growers to ever live. He understood aspects of it that nobody else in the world understood. He was a good teacher, in the sense that, I wanted to have all the knowledge given to me, right here and right now, and he wouldn’t do that. He would give me just enough knowledge to keep me interested and make me go out and learn it on my own.”

“I would watch YouTube videos, read books, go get more books at the library and buy books. That’s the way I learned. The only other way I could put that knowledge to work was to buy microscopes and look for myself at what the books were talking about. Once I got somewhat of an understanding of what I was supposed to be looking for, it all kind of snowballed into people sending me soil samples for testing. I’ve even helped a place in Indiana with their composting facility. It turned into way more than what I was ever expecting.”

The Hancock County Fairgrounds is at 1430 State Route 1389 in Hawesville. To stay updated on the upcoming giant produce weigh-off event in September, follow the Hancock County KY Fairground Facebook page and send a request to join the Kentucky Giant Pumpkin Growers Club Facebook group.