This year's Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival Weigh-Off brought laurels to an Oregonian stay-at-home dad who grew a gigantic 1,524-pound pumpkin in his backyard.

Thad Starr, from Pleasant Hill, Oregon, won this year’s pumpkin competition in Half Moon Bay, California, with his prodigious gourd, grown in the backyard of his one-acre Pleasant Hill home he shares with his wife, Katrina, and two young children, reports The Oregonian on its site, oregonlive.com.

The 40-year-old entered his gardening success in Monday's Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay – and won. The above-mentioned site reports that it was Starr’s second year experimenting with overgrown pumpkins and his first in the quirky contest.

His gardening efforts have earned him $9,144 – six dollars for every pound. He has even managed to break previous weight records set during the annual weigh-off.

Starr told The Oregonian that delivering his behemoth of a pumpkin to the contest was a tedious task and as stressful as they come: deteriorating the gourd would have meant disqualification.

He left the pumpkin so it can be part of this weekend's Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival, which includes a parade, but he will return with his wife and kids, Danika, 4, and Derek, 2, for the festival.

Half Moon Bay, located approximately 28 miles south of San Francisco, draws hundreds of thousands of people each year with its Pumpkin Festival held in October, according to the town’s official website.

Starr, a novice contest-weight pumpkin gardener by general standards, beat 70 other competitors, including reigning champion Joel Holland of Puyallup, Wash., whose Atlantic Giant made him the runner-up at 1,384 pounds, reports the San Jose Mercury News. Holland had won the Half Moon Bay contest for the past three years.