For two days each October, the sidewalk outside the Memorial Union bookstore at North Dakota State University turns into something between a farm stand and a campus reunion. This year the NDSU Horticulture Club's annual pumpkin sale runs Thursday and Friday, Oct. 22-23, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.
The headline attraction is not a display of carved jack-o'-lanterns or a table of pies. It is a single pumpkin weighing roughly 200 pounds, grown by a researcher on campus, and getting it to the sale has already required more engineering than anyone expected.
Ava Haldorson, president of the NDSU Horticulture Club, described the problem in plain terms: the pumpkin was too big for the door. "We kind of faced the challenge of getting it through the doorway," she said. "So, a little bit of STEM thinking, we used a rug, rolled it off the pallet, and used the rug to push it into the greenhouse."
That is the detail that makes the sale worth a detour. A pumpkin of that size cannot simply be picked up and carried; four people were needed to move it, and the solution they landed on involved rolling it off its pallet and using a rug to push it into the greenhouse. It is the kind of improvisation that a land-grant university's horticulture program tends to produce almost by accident, where the people growing the plants are also the people who have to figure out how to move them.
The club has not publicized the researcher's name or the variety of the giant pumpkin, and the details of how it was cultivated remain with the grower. What is known is that it was grown on campus, which places it in a long tradition at NDSU of tying classroom and laboratory work to the practical business of raising things that people actually want to buy, eat, or, in this case, photograph.
The sale itself is a modest, drop-in affair. Shoppers can expect a selection of pumpkins for carving and decorating, and the club uses the event as both a seasonal service to the Fargo campus community and a fundraiser for its activities through the year. Because it is set up outside the bookstore rather than in a field, it draws a mix of students walking between classes, faculty and staff on lunch breaks, and Fargo residents who come to campus specifically for the selection.
For anyone planning to attend, the practical details are simple. The sale runs both days from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. outside the Memorial Union bookstore on the NDSU campus in Fargo. The 200-pound pumpkin is the obvious draw, but it is worth arriving early if you want first pick of the more conventionally sized ones, since the best carving pumpkins tend to go quickly on the first morning.
It is also a reminder of what a university horticulture club actually does. Between coursework and research, members spend the growing season tending plants that most of the campus never sees, and the pumpkin sale is one of the few moments when that work shows up on the sidewalk in front of everyone. The 200-pound specimen, hauled through a doorway on a rug by four people, is the most visible version of that effort.
So if you are on the hunt for the perfect pumpkin, the NDSU Horticulture Club will be outside the Memorial Union bookstore on Thursday and Friday, Oct. 22-23, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The giant one will be hard to miss.