I got a call one afternoon from a pumpkin carver in Salt Lake, Adam Smith. He wanted to buy a pumpkin for a
company to carve at their fall party. Reluctantly I agreed, why reluctantly? I grew these for me to show
off! A week later Adam called and wanted another pumpkin, well things kind of took off from there.
2016 I planted 2 acres in the middle of my 70 acre corn field. I ended up having a pick-your-own patch
of several varieties and about 200 pumpkins 300 to 600 pounds. It was a learning experience, we
picked up several parties in the Salt Lake area. I supplied the pumpkins and Adam carved.
By 2018 I was tired of milking cows, our days started before sunup and lasted well past the sun goes
down. Dairy markets flip flopped creating several challenges for the operation, yet the work never
ended. We decided to make some major changes and liquidate the Dairy side of things and transition
into cash crops like horse hay, pumpkins and veggies. In December 2018 we sold the ground around
the dairy facilities and by February we had shut the doors to a 5th generation dairy.
It was then that I purchased 50 Frankenstein Monster molds from a company in China (Keep in mind I
know the history of Frankenstein but marketing it’s easier to sell without getting into being politically
correct)
Pretty easy right, slap a mold on and have a pumpkin shaped like Frankenstein’s head? Haha, my first
pumpkin took me 8 hours to get out of the mold with plenty of battle scars. At the end of the season in
2019 we ended up with 22 Frankenstein pumpkins. A lot of time and money goes into the molds
themselves then trying to grow a pumpkin in the mold. It turns into a daily task checking molds for
pumpkins that have stopped growing, turned moldy or blown up.
In 2020 everything come to a screeching halt because of the covid pandemic. Events didn’t go over well
with the pandemic. We focused on our competition and our pick-your -own patch. We kicked out a
1,448 pound pumpkin which landed me in 2 nd place that year. By this time many came to the pick-your-
own patch to see the giants, get pictures and find that perfect carving pumpkin for Halloween
I decide to kick 2021 off a little harder, purchased more molds and grew a few more giants to sell.
Unintentionally I had a couple videos go viral on TikTok, then Instagram and finally Facebook. Well
needless to say Frank aka Frankenstein’s monster ended up being shipped via UPS from California to
Maine and several states in between. Our giants have been in several events around Ut and most
recently we shipped to a event in Austin Texas.
