Jay Richard, “Wyoming’s Pumpkin King,” has been helicopter-parenting his precious pumpkins for years, with great successes and many disappointments.
This year, he’s taken the hands-off approach to his pumpkins. The results, from his perspective, are mixed.
“Rosie the Riveter is at 1,410 pounds,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I just measured her this morning. She’s my only real pumpkin going.”
Meanwhile, Andy and Amy Corbin have three pumpkins happily growing in their high tunnels near Cheyenne. If the next month of growing goes well, all three could cross the 2,000-pound threshold.
“I already have one over 2,000 pounds, and if things go OK, they'll all be over 2,000 pounds by the time the season's done,” Andy Corbin said. “A lot can happen in September, so we’ll just have to see where we end up.”
Corbin could set a state record at the Wyoming State Champion Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off and Pumpkin Drop at the Washakie County Fairgrounds on Sept. 26.
Richard’s pumpkin, meanwhile, will reach its greatest height before plummeting 150 feet onto a group of targets below, and he’ll savor every moment leading up to that fall.
“I’m very satisfied with this pumpkin,” he said. “It’s a very good pumpkin.”
Broken Record Breaking
Richard usually grows three massive pumpkins each year. “Rosie the Riveter” was named in recognition of America’s 250th anniversary.
Richard’s other name-worthy pumpkin, “Betsy Ross,” is “slow-growing and ugly” at a paltry 350 pounds. He also has a third, 500-pound pumpkin in the greenhouse, but that stopped growing weeks ago.
“It’s not rotting, so we're just going to leave it sit there,” he said.
Richard has had a goal of raising a 2,000-pound pumpkin in his custom-built Worland greenhouse for years. His highest point was 2023, when he successfully grew a 1,784-pound pumpkin and earned a Gen2 Jacket Award from Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, the “Master’s Jacket” of pumpkin growing.
Since then, Richard has been disappointed. Pumpkins grown from world-champion seeds have either stopped short or split before they could be competitive.
Rosie’s still putting on 10 pounds a day, but he doesn’t see any record-breakers, state or personal, coming out his greenhouse this year.
The irony isn’t lost on Richard that he spent decades trying to grow his first 1,000-pound pumpkin, only to “shrug off” a solid 1,400-pound pumpkin this year.
“It seems to be a theme, doesn’t it?” he said. “I say I’m all about breaking records, not to sound like a broken record, but I’m stuck right here with a really good pumpkin.”
Grow What I Know
One reason why Rosie has underperformed, from Richard’s perspective, is that he’s been a different kind of pumpkin parent this year.
In the past, Richard has doted on his pumpkins. He meticulously weighed, measured, and sustained them in an optimal environment, constantly invested in every technology or nutrient to super-size his seeds.
“This year, I really took a hands-off approach,” he said. “Rather than seeking the latest, greatest, fastest, bestest, and immersing myself in soil science and plants, I stepped back. I used the knowledge that I have to grow what I know.”
Daily weighings of a pumpkin grown on a scale turned into checking in on the pumpkin’s size every once in a while. He hasn’t sent his soil or any tissue samples for laboratory testing at all, something he’s routinely done in the past.
The only thing he’s added to his custom-built, air-conditioned greenhouse is a shade cloth to prevent his young plants from getting sunburnt. Otherwise, he’s “letting the plant be a plant.”
“It’ll let me see if I’m the problem,” he said. “I know that I'm the problem, but by doing less, maybe I'll see how much of the problem I really am.”
‘We Don’t Deserve These Results’
Like Richard, the Corbins have been more hands-off with their pumpkins than in years past. Even they are surprised by how well they’re growing.
“We did not deserve the results we're having right now, compared to the work we've put in previously,” Corbin said. “I'm getting so busy just in my work and other things, but the results are going to be good. It makes me wonder if I was just spending too much time in the patch worrying about them and trying to do different things.”
In October 2025, Andy and Amy Corbin broke the previous state record – which they set in 2023 – at Nick’s Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Aurora, Colorado, with a massive 2,065-pound pumpkin.
A year later, Andy Corbin believes their best pumpkin is on track to once again set a record. He’s hedging his bets, but not his plants, until it’s time to take the best pumpkin to whatever weigh-off he decides to haul it.
One lesson from the hands-off approach came when Corbin removed several weeds growing around his best pumpkin plant.
He’s usually fastidious about getting rid of them, as more weeds mean more water and nutrients being directed away from the pumpkin.
Removing the weeds did the opposite of what he intended.
“It actually dropped the weight of the pumpkin,” he said. “The only thing I can attribute it to is that disturbing the weeds disturbed all the pumpkin roots. So, note to self: if you don't get the weeds pulled sooner, don't go out and do it.”
The Corbins have never had three pumpkins reach 2,000 pounds in one season. Neither is saying they will.
“September's a tough time,” Andy said. “When the pumpkins are older, they do what they want. There's still a risk I could rot my pumpkin out before it even gets to a competition because I wasn't proactive enough. We have a long way to go, and it's not even September yet.”
Better Be Bigger
Richard regularly networks with giant pumpkin growers in Wyoming and other states. From what he’s heard, 2026 has been a mixed bag for many of his peers.
“It seems like it's one of those years that you're either doing really good or really poor,” he said. “I’m watching some of the greatest growers in the world, truly some of the best in the world, losing pumpkins to splits.”
Corbin has high hopes for his best pumpkin, but he shares Richard's professional pumpkin grower perspective on what qualifies as a successful season. Even last year’s state record 2,085-pound pumpkin was “disappointing.”
“If you had talked to me about that one I had last year, that one was bigger, but it turned out to be a puffball,” he said. “You should be so happy growing a 2,000-pound pumpkin, but I was expecting it to be a 2,500-pound minimum. Having it at 2,085 pounds was a blow to me.”
If pumpkins aren’t grown on a scale, they have to be measured or even tapped on to get an idea of their approximate weight and quality. Many growers have topped the scales and still left disappointed.
“You don't know until it's on the scale,” Corbin said. “I had to be happy (last year) because I still made 2,000 pounds, but you always want better. You always want to improve.”
Weighing Way More
Richard has been spreading the gospel of giant pumpkins throughout the Bighorn Basin. Those seeds are showing results, and many first-time growers he mentored are gaining ground fast.
“We have some local growers here in Worland that are definitely stepping up,” he said. They were, you know, 300, 400, 500-pound growers, and there's one of them, maybe two, that might hit 1,000 pounds this year.”
Richard will be at the Weigh-Off with Rosie, whatever she weighs, but pumpkins might not be the marquee event that afternoon.
“Ron Hoffman in Riverton may have a state record green squash,” he said. “The current record is 680 pounds, and Ron’s definitely on track and well on pace to go way beyond that.”
Hoffman might also outdo himself with a potential state-record marrow.
“He set the state record last year at 97 pounds, and he's already there with this one,” Richard said.
Corbin is still deciding on what weigh-offs he’ll attend.
He usually favors ones closer to home in Colorado, but this might be the year he brings one of his best to Worland.
“That could be in the cards, if I need to get one out of the patch,” he said. “It'd be fun to go up there just to say ‘hi' to Jay and Ron, but I don't know for sure.”
Richard’s most excited about the fruits of a workshop he did last year. Every third-grader in Worland and Ten Sleep got a pumpkin seed to take home, and many of them have been planted and are growing.
The plan now is for them to have a classroom competition on the giant scale.
“We'll weigh the pumpkins by classroom,” Richard said. “We'll weigh them all together, and each classroom will get a cumulative total. It should be a lot of fun for them.
Go Cowboys
The main event Sept. 26 will be the post-weigh-off pumpkin drop. Several thousand pounds of pumpkin will be hoisted 150 feet into the air to decimate whatever is placed underneath them.
Previous targets include an RV in 2023, a cutout of Wile E. Coyote in 2024, and an outhouse in 2025.
For 2026, Richard decided the target should inspire team spirit.
“The University of Wyoming is playing the University of Hawaii that day,” he said. “Someone at Security State Bank, one of our sponsors, mentioned that, and that’s totally what I’m going to do.”
The pumpkins will be dropped on a giant “H” modeled after the University of Hawaii’s logo. It might not help the Cowboys in their long-standing rivalry, but it can’t hurt.
“It’s too bad they’re not playing CSU that day,” Richard said of Colorado State. “That’s all I can say.”
Next Year ...
After being more hands-off this year, Richard and the Corbins have learned a lot about how best to nurture their precious pumpkins to their full potential. Their takeaways for next year, however, couldn’t be any different.
For Richard, enough is enough.
“I'm going back to helicopter momming,” he said. “This was driving me absolutely nuts. I’m hardly measuring it, kept very few records, and haven’t done any soil or tissue tests. It's absolutely consuming my thoughts.”
This year’s innovation was compost extract, courtesy of Caitlin Youngquist at Dirt Works Wyoming. It’s the only major thing Richard changed this season, and his plants have never looked younger.
“Plant health has been spectacular,” Richard said. “I have 5-month-old plants that look 30 days old. I've never had plants that look this young this late in the season. Maybe I need to drink some of this stuff.”
He’ll also need to evict the mosquitoes that have eagerly taken up residence in his greenhouse.
“They’re big enough that when they land on you, you feel them,” he said. “They need to get clearance to land, they're so big.”
The Corbins are cautiously optimistic he’ll set a Wyoming record with one of his still-growing pumpkins, breaking the record they set for the third time.
Andy Corbin doesn’t have a plan for next year, and that’s by design.
“We decided we will take a year off,” he said. “Sometimes you have to do that because you get burned out, and both my wife and I are at that stage.”
The thing that keeps Richard and Corbin going, outside of their own drive to grow bigger and better, is the community they enjoy. That matters more than any record or personal best ever could.
“Some of the growers are so competitive they want to know exactly where you're taking your pumpkin so they may not go to that competition,” Corbin said. “We’re really not in it for the prize money. We’re in it for the camaraderie.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
