The Allardt Pumpkin Festival

 

The Allardt Pumpkin Festival is one of the most visited Fall festivals in Tennessee. This small town is barely over six hundred people but attracts more than twelve thousand people on the first Saturday each October. Visitors from Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Southeast are ready to welcome the Fall season.

 

What better way to kick off and celebrate the fall season than The Allardt Pumpkin Festival. This year’s winner weighed in at just under 1500 pounds. You won’t find pumpkins like this at stores! Giant pumpkin growers from Tennessee, and other southern states, will be crossing their fingers hoping they will take home the top prize – and perhaps a world record – as each of their enormous gourds hit the scale Saturday morning. Participation is encouraged for everyone to enter your pumpkin, green squash, and watermelon for a chance to win cash prizes and bragging rights. Spectators can watch as entries are unloaded and moved with a forklift to a special scale.

 

 

The Allardt Pumpkin Festival History

 

The Allardt Pumpkin Festival was originally a homecoming festival. Then, about 1990 a resident grew a 700-pound pumpkin. Of course, this became the talk around town and everyone wanted to see this giant pumpkin. After seeing the attention this giant pumpkin created, the homecoming festival committee decided to add a pumpkin growing contest. After this, the festival grew each year to the popularity it is today.

 

 

The Allardt Pumpkin Festival Weigh-Off Event

 

Although it wasn’t a record, the heaviest pumpkin’s weight this year was 1,491 pounds. Jason Terry, from Oneida, Tennessee grew this. State records from Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia have been broken for the giant pumpkin and green squash categories at the Allardt Pumpkin Festival. The parking lot of Sandy’s Diner is where you will want to watch the giant produce get unloaded and weighed. Weigh-off is from 10 am to 1 pm central time but entries start to come in about 8 am if you want to watch them unload.

 

The top prize for the largest watermelon went to Spencer Glasgow of Bessemer, Alabama. His Watermelon weighed in at 321 pounds. Although there have been larger watermelons entered in the Allardt Pumpkin Festival, this set a new Alabama state record. Chris Kent, who is a watermelon world record holder from Sevierville, Tennessee, enters watermelons here too. His 2014 world record watermelon was 351.5 pounds.

 

John Brooks from Ronda, North Carolina, won first place for a green squash with a weight of 625 pounds.

 

Other competitions include Dipper Gourd, Cornstalk, Sunflower, and Sweet Potato.

 

The Allardt Pumpkin Festival is an official Great Pumpkin Commonwealth (GPC) site. GPC is a worldwide organization that promotes the hobby of growing giant pumpkins and other fruits and vegetables. You might enjoy looking at the GPC website.

 

 

How to Grow a Giant Pumpkin

 

These tips are for a basic understanding to get a general idea. We are not horticulturists by any means, but you can get instructions with in-depth details here.

 

BigPumpkins.com is a great support community too.

 

First, you have to find the right seeds. A high pedigree hybrid seed could cost you anywhere from 10 dollars to 100 dollars each. Pumpkins that have grown to over one thousand pounds supply these seeds and almost all giant pumpkins are from the Dill’s Atlantic Giant variety.

 

Next, you have to start preparing the soil in the fall. Till up a sunny well-drained spot then cover with a thick base of composted cow manure. After you have created a mound then cover it with straw for the winter.

 

Plant your seeds in a pot about a month before your last frost then, plant your seed in the outside growing area you’ve prepared when the right time comes.

 

Maintain the root system as described in the link above. Block wind around your pumpkin and cover with a canopy. The direct sunlight hardens the skin preventing it from growing bigger. The biggest pumpkins can gain as much as twenty pounds a day!

 

Click here for an inside look at a local prize-winning family 

 

 

Food and Craft Vendors

Bruno Gernt Park is where you will find most food vendors along with plenty of shopping from crafts and boutiques. Have you ever tried a pumpkin roll? You’ll find plenty of bakers who have brought their best recipes here for you to buy. You will also find a wide variety of great festival foods to try. You will find the usual deep-fried foods that are expected at a festival. Along with fried Oreo’s, you can even get Fried Pork Rinds. In America, Fried Pork Rinds are found mostly in the American South and are simply deep-fried pig skin that puffs into a light and crispy snack.

This interesting Pork Rind Factory Tour will show how they are made. 

 

Some different options we noticed: Cajun Jambalaya, Philly Cheesesteaks, Fresh Squeezed Lemonade, Pinto Beans and Cornbread, Italian and Polish Sausages.

 

Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, Fried Vegetables, and several BBQ vendors also cook great dishes.

 

 

How can you go to a Fall Festival without trying some homemade baked goods? Pumpkin rolls are the most popular but you will also find lots of cookies, loaf bread, cakes, cinnamon rolls, pies, fried pies, and even cannoli.

Click here for another fun Tennessee event you will enjoy.

 

 

Poppin’ J’s Kettle Corn

 

 

One of our favorite vendors is Poppin J’s, Kettle Corn. A freshly popped popcorn smell welcomes you as you enter Bruno Gernt Park. You might see other vendors but the welcoming popcorn smell reaches further than eyesight and covers the whole park. This smell is quietly telling you to ignore everything else, this should be your first stop in the park.

 

They use quality ingredients with the perfect combination of salty and sweet. They pour all of the ingredients into a huge heated kettle then stir constantly with a canoe paddle while it’s heating to the perfect popping temperature. Because of hot oil and kernels popping out they use protective clothing and a face shield. We anxiously wait as each kernel of corn begins to slowly explode one by one into a little white cloud. Suddenly, they all start popping together. We love the sound of the exploding popcorn kernels as they hum into a chorus of pops. It’s so noisy you can’t have a conversation until it’s finished popping. After about thirty seconds, popping is finished causing our mouths to water in anticipation of eating the warm tasty kettle corn.

Learn the science of what makes the popcorn pop sound here.

 

Popcorn is a fun snack that is usually shared with other people in special moments. What are some of your favorite memories involving popcorn?

 

 

Miss Miller’s Donuts

 

Another favorite is Mrs. Miller’s Donuts. This shop always makes fresh donuts on location. They mix the dough then hand form it into donut rounds. Then the donuts go into the fryer to cook until they’re the perfect brown. After they have briefly cooled, they drop into a big sugary pan of warmed thick glaze, flipped then put on the drying rack. These are not ordinary donuts though, these are huge! To watch them come out of the glaze and onto a drying rack is simply mouth-watering. Thick Glaze is slowly dripping off, which makes it hard not to grab a plate and dig in before the glaze cools and hardens.

 

Bring cash because you will probably want to take some home. Miss Miller’s Donuts has their mobile bakery set up closest to the four-way stop sign in Allardt, you will not miss them or the line. Luckily, Miss Miller’s Donuts is also open two days a week in Crossville, Tennessee.

 

 

The Allardt Pumpkin Festival Auto Show

 

For such a small town this is a very big car show. Over four hundred entries came from many Southeastern U.S. states, and even from several Midwest states too. Since this Saturday was all sun and deep blue sky, these clean and sparkling classic automobile owners were polishing every last detail imaginable.

 

 

Antique Tractor and Motorcycle Show

 

Right across the road from the auto show is the Antique Tractor Show and Motorcycle Show.

 

 

 

 

Children’s Costume Contest

 

 

Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Roll Contests

 

 

The Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Roll contests are inside the Allardt Fire Department bays. The fire department also serves a BBQ lunch so you can see all of the entries as you check out their menu.

 

 

Activity Schedule (All times are central time zone)

 

Pumpkin Run starts at 7 am for 10k, 5k, and 3k races.

Food and Craft vendors 8 am – 6 pm

Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Roll Contest entries are 8 am – 9 am

Weigh Off 10am – 1pm

Auto Show 8am – 2pm

Motorcycle Show and Ride 8am – 12pm

Antique Tractor Show 9am – 2pm

Children’s Costume Contest 10am

Beauty Pageant Winners, from the previous week, announced at 10 am

The Allardt Pumpkin Festival Parade 3 pm

Live Entertainment 12pm – 7pm

Pooch Parade registration is at 4 pm

Fireworks after dark