Write down your goal, read it every day
Marie Snider
Saturday, October 21, 2006
It’s fall again, the season of color — yellows, reds and oranges.
Last week, Weather Channel’s Heather Tesch wore a burnt orange outfit and her partner Marshall Seese sported a tie of similar hue, as they announced the new record for the largest pumpkin in the world.
This pumpkin was grown by Ron Wallace of Greene, R.I. It weighed in on Oct. 7, 2006, at the humongous weight of 1,502 pounds.
Pumpkins have been grown on this continent for a very long time. Before the white man came, Native Americans grew pumpkins and pumpkin quickly became an important food in the early settlers’ diet.
According to tradition, the Pilgrims ate something like pumpkin pie for dessert. It was a pumpkin custard flavored with maple syrup and baked in pumpkin shells.
And ever since then, Americans have been growing pumpkins. Five-pound, 10-pound and even 15-pound pumpkins. But not pumpkins that weighed almost a ton!
The competitive growing of pumpkins didn’t begin until the early 1900s. In 1900, William Warnock, of Goderich, Ontario, Canada, sent a 400-pound pumpkin to the Paris World’s Fair. In 1903 he grew a pumpkin three pounds heavier. And his 403-pound record held until 1976, when a 451-pound pumpkin was displayed.
Then in 1981, a Nova Scotia farmer named Howard Dill, who had been breeding pumpkins for size since the 1950s, grew a 493-pound pumpkin. Dill still sells his seeds for premium prices.
With the help of Dill’s seeds, the race was on. The pumpkins grew bigger and bigger. In 1984, 612 pounds; 1986, 671; 1990, 816; 1993, 884; and 1994, 990.
Then the big one. In 1996, Nathan and Paula Zehr from upstate New York grew a record-breaking 1,061-pound pumpkin.
Nathan and Paula lost their title the very next year as pumpkins continued to grow bigger, culminating in this year’s 1,502-pound monster. But that didn’t matter, because they had reached their goal.
For years, big pumpkin growers had tried to break the 1,000 barrier. And a $50,000 award had been offered for the first pumpkin to reach 1,000 pounds.
When Nathan and Paula, who happen to be my cousin Janet’s son and daughter-in-law, heard about the award, they decided to win it.
For eight years they worked hard to increase the size of their pumpkins. And finally, their 1,061-pound “The Great Can Do” was entered in the “The Guinness Book of Records.”
Nathan later said, “We wrote it down on a piece of paper that we wanted to grow a 1,000-pound pumpkin. We used it as our goal, read it daily and worked hard.”
For six months they worked on “The Great Can Do” five hours a day. Protecting the vines from heavy rains, turning on a fan when it was too hot and a heater when it was too cold. They even hired a veterinarian to administer an antibiotic when the vine developed a fungus.
You may not dream of growing a monster pumpkin, but think about what you would like to accomplish in the months and years ahead.
When you decide, why not do what Nathan and Paula did? Write your goal down and read it every day. You may be amazed at the results.
Marie Snider is an award-winning healthcare writer and syndicated columnist. Write Marie Snider at thisside60@aol.com or visit her website at www.visit-snider.com