CORTEZ – What started out as a casual pastime for Cortez resident and backyard farmer Tim Caniff has turned into a serious statewide agriculture record.
At 1,039 pounds, Caniff’s great pumpkin – grown in his backyard – has blown the previous state record out of the water by more than 400 pounds.
“This started off as a fun beer-drinking hobby,” Caniff said. “This pumpkin was golf ball-size a little over two months ago.”
It was a nearly two-hour long process on Saturday morning to get the pumpkin out of the garden and into the back of Caniff’s truck to get it weighed.
Fellow fisherman Tim Murphy, who helped with the pumpkin’s move, told Caniff, “Two kings are going to be crowned today. One in England and one in Cortez.”
Prior to Saturday morning’s weigh-in, Caniff, a commercial fisherman for Cortez Bait and Seafood, had fashioned a hoist from a bait net scoop, with rope and chains to lift the oversized fruit (a pumpkin is a fruit, not a vegetable).
Once lifted, a wooden pallet was pushed under the pumpkin and then dragged by truck to a waiting forklift. It was then lifted into the truck bed and Caniff drove it slowly to the fish house. It was once again removed by a forklift and placed carefully onto a scale.
When the scale registered 1,039 pounds, after the removal of the pallet and metal lifting frame, he received handshakes and congratulations from his friends and fellow fishermen.
“I’m blown away,” he said. “Four digits. You just never know if it will take off.”
A representative from the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Extension Service was present at the weigh-in to verify and certify the results and send those results to the Florida Department of Agriculture.
“This is a Florida state record for sure,” said Christine Russo, commercial horticulture agent at UF/IFAS. “Last year’s record was a 622-pound pumpkin grown in Santa Rosa County.”
The statewide record comes with bragging rights, and Caniff said he’s going to try to grow a pumpkin next year to exceed this one.
Caniff has grown a pumpkin every year for about the past 20 years. The last couple of years, the fruit was up to about 100 pounds.
“I had one about 8 or 9 years ago that was 675 pounds,” he said. “At 600 pounds, I would have 10 guys come over and give them some beers and we could lift it. This one is too big for that.”
Caniff started the seed indoors last December. Since Florida sun is not the most hospitable environment for pumpkin-growing, Caniff fashioned a sun shade to protect the fruit.
He said the debris left by Hurricane Ian proved to be great compost for his backyard garden.
“I took the leaves that came down after the hurricane and put them into the soil,” he said. “Between that and fertilizing the soil with cow manure, the pumpkin just took off.”
He credited the genetics of the seed as contributing to the pumpkin’s size.
“I’ve met growers over the years,” he said. “I was introduced to the 1885 Werner seed. People have grown 2,000-pound pumpkins with that seed.”
Once the weighing is done, Caniff will return the pumpkin back to nature.
“It’s the circle of life,” he said. “I’m going to give it back to the farm where the manure came from so it can be fed to the cows there.”
