Belmont Correctional Institution’s Pumpkin Project Profiled
ST. CLAIRSVILLE – The pumpkin growers at Belmont Correctional (BECI) were featured statewide on the Ohio Newsroom over WOUB-FM Radio Athens/Cambridge Friday morning.
An almost five-minute audio segment by Kaitlin Thorne outlines the five-year-old pumpkin growing competition between Ohio’s prisons, most notably Belmont and Mansfield, who have led the giant pumpkin competition since its inception. Thorne noted, however, that Belmont has taken top honors all five years!
The segment mentions the Barnesville Pumpkin Festival and its connection to the worldwide Great Pumpkin Commonwealth weigh-off with Dean Wehr, weighmaster, quoted.
BECI was initiated by the late Brocks Bosworth, corrections officer, who died in 2021 at the age of 54. Bosworth entered the 2007 King Pumkin at the local festival that tipped the scales at 1,289 pounds.
Today, the pumpkin patch is named in his honor.
In last month’s competition, the prisoners came in with their10th place pumpkin that weighed 950-pounds. A week earlier, they lost a 1,700 specimen when it split, which is always a possibility.
Access The Ohio Newsroom article and video here.
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