SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:

And now an update to a story we brought you last year. It was a year ago this week that we introduced listeners to a champion farmer.

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TRAVIS GIENGER: My name is Travis Gienger. I am a horticulture teacher and I also grow giant pumpkins.

PFEIFFER: Last October, Gienger, who's from Anoka, Minn., set the record for the largest pumpkin ever grown in North America.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Well, yesterday it happened again. You go, Travis. He beat his own record.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Two, seven, four, nine.

(CHEERING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Half Moon Bay is in the record books. That's a world record. World record.

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KELLY: That's right, 2,749 pounds - almost 200 pounds heavier than last year's fruit.

PFEIFFER: Gienger took the top prize at the 50th annual World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, Calif., with a piece of produce he affectionately named Michael Jordan.

KELLY: The man came to win, Sacha.

PFEIFFER: (Laughter).

KELLY: As our colleagues at Minnesota Public Radio put it in their coverage, sometimes you got a gourd big or gourd home.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE SMASHING PUMPKINS SONG, "TODAY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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