Passion for growing giants also seen in farmers’ dedication
I first learned of Milan Lukes in 2015.
The 13 year old from Winnipeg had set his sights on entering the heaviest pumpkin in Manitoba’s Roland Pumpkin Fair that year.
This was no small task (pun intended).
Read Also
FCC report helps put farmland rental rate picture into focus
Cash rental rates for farmland are something of a black box. No public reporting system exists, and since it’s a competitive market, most farmers would rather not divulge what they’re paying.
I had edited a video about giant pumpkin growers for a colleague, and Lukes stood out. He wasn’t on camera for long, but in that video footage I saw the excitement in his eyes as he stood in his family’s garden in the summer sun beside a pumpkin that dwarfed him in size.
On a recent afternoon earlier this month, I attended a giant pumpkin growing seminar in Selkirk, Man. One of the presenters was none other than Milan Lukes.
I was eager to meet him in person, and he quickly recalled that video, aptly named, Garden Titans. He enjoyed it so much that he’d even saved a copy to a DVD.
Lukes shared with me the level of commitment he had needed at such a young age to grow an award-winning giant pumpkin: forgoing trips, sleepovers with friends and even one year convincing this family to let him stay at home alone as they headed to the lake for a week.
For this burgeoning giant pumpkin grower, abandoning his responsibilities as a pumpkin parent would not do. His two plants needed 100 gallons of water a day, and he was not about to stunt their growth.
As Lukes went through his presentation, I was quite impressed at the amount of practical information he had to share with attendees. There was far more involved to growing a giant pumpkin than I would have imagined.
The amount of passion and energy for what Lukes accomplished is something I see in the many folks I am grateful enough to have met in the farming world. In many cases, it’s often with a camera in hand as I request an interview.
Having a camera pointed at you for video purposes can be intimidating (we’ve all seen how people scatter when a camera is pointed their way), but farmers are almost always accommodating.
Not only do they need to know how to grow a successful crop year after year, but they need to do it in a way that ensures they remain financially viable so they can continue to do what they love.
It takes a lot of passion, energy and knowledge to plant a field full of seeds and turn it into a harvestable crop.
One might even say it’s a giant of a task.
Greg Berg is a digital editor for Glacier FarmMedia.
Source: producer.com