In a Belgian town where the residents are nicknamed “pumpkin eaters,” celebrations are ringing out that a local claimed 1st prize in the European Pumpkin Championship.
At 2,539 pounds, (1,152 kg) Mario Vangeel grew the biggest pumpkin of the year.
His pumpkin had to be transported from his hometown of Kasterlee to Ludwigsburg in Germany for the competition; not so easy when your gourd weighs as much as a 2007 Honda Civic.
Vangeel took first place in the Belgian Pumpkin Championship in 2019, and second place in the European Championship back in 2021. This year, as he strapped down his pumpkin, he thought he had a chance.
“I was hoping yes, but I didn’t think I was going to win,” the 50-year-old tractor driver tells Euronews Green.
Vangeel hails from the town of Kasterlee, which is known as the town of the pumpkin eaters, as his wife, Bieke, explained.
“They found papers from the 1600s saying that because they had poor land, they couldn’t grow a lot of food. But pumpkins did very well here. And that’s where it started.”
Kasterlee boasts a giant pumpkin-growing club of 50 members, some of whom were set to challenge Vangeel at the European Championship until disaster struck: snails.
It was a rainy growing season all throughout Europe this year, and some growers lost their prized pumpkins to snails. One gentleman had managed to grow a pumpkin over 1,000 kg, but days before he was to transport it to Ludwigsburg, a snail made a little hole in it, and before long rot had set it and it couldn’t be moved.
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Most of the pumpkins grown at the competition will be turned into boats for a silly canoe event. The gourds are hollowed out and used as boats for Kasterlee’s Pumpkin Regatta—a race that now attracts 5,000 visitors to the town to watch members of the Kasterlee Kayaking Club—and international competitors too—race down a river in hollowed-out pumpkins.
Bieke is proud of her husband, but admits that between herself and the gourd, her man found time to love only one of them. She told Euronews she’s thankful he’s no longer sleeping in the greenhouse, so to speak.
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As for Vangeel, his next plan is to compete at next year’s World Pumpkin Championship, where he hopes to break the record held by Travis Gienger, of Anoka, Minnesota. Gienger holds the record for the world’s heaviest pumpkin at 2,749 pounds (1,296 kg.)
You’re on Vangeel!
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