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Resident's yard filled with giant jack-o-lanterns

October 26, 2008 @ 08:30 PM

DAVE LAVENDER

The Herald-Dispatch

HUNTINGTON -- Did you hear the one about the snowman, Sarah Palin and Barack Obama showing up at the lawyer's house?

It's not a joke, just Huntington resident Paul Farrell's front yard, which is now carved up with more than 75 pumpkins -- including the behemoth orange beasts from the West Virginia Pumpkin Festival.

Farrell buys the top pumpkins at Milton's big pumpkin auction (which raises money for scholarships). He had dozens of folks over Sunday afternoon for the annual carving party, which produced a pumpkin snowman, a giant Marshall "M" out of a 694-pound pumpkin and a flower out of the 770-pound pumpkin that was the biggest one this year at Milton's West Virginia Pumpkin Festival.

"It's a nice neighborhood distraction," Farrell said with a smile as dozens of people roamed his yard carving and scraping pumpkin guts. "We pay homage to the great Ric Griffith."

Farrell's son Sean -- the chief engineer, pumpkin carver and head snowman builder -- said while a lot of the pumpkins were free form, they got the Palin and Obama pumpkin outlines on the Internet.

"The Obama pumpkin was nice and easy to carve and looks great from the outside, but on the inside, no substance," Sean Farrell said with a laugh.

"Yeah, well the McCain pumpkin just got angry and fell off," Paul Farrell said.

Politics aside, the Farrell day of fun was assisted by many hands that bore the stickiness of pumpkin guts.

Randy Black brought over several behemoths from his garden, located off of Ohio 775 in Lawrence County.

"I've only been growing them two years," Black said. "I was over here carving them, and Paul was like 'Take some seeds home,' and we did."

This year, Black had a 254-pounder as well as plenty that went over 100 pounds. They were carved into super-sized creatures including a howling wolf.

"I probably have a dozen that went between 100 and 200 pounds," Black said. "That werewolf weighs 150 pounds, and that grew in only four weeks."

Mark Webb/The Herald-Dispatch

Butch Cremeans carves a 770-pound pumpkin on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008, in Huntington.

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