It’s not Halloween without some eye-catching decorations, and one Rapid City house stepped up, in a big way.
How much would you pay to have the best Halloween decoration?
“Definitely thought Craig was crazy, I was immediately like, how are we going to even get this to our house, up our steep driveway, how are we going to move it, there were all these worries,” said Erika Peterson, Nerdy Nuts co-founder.
All this concern over a gourd.
But at a dollar a pound – which doesn’t sound like much unless you’re in the market for the largest gourd grown in South Dakota – that’s a hefty price to pay for one with 1300 pounds of pumpkin.
And another $500 to enlist an expert carver.
“This is really his inspiration,” said Craig Mount, the co-founder of Nerdy Nuts and mastermind behind the giant pumpkin carving. “He spent 15 hours, working well past midnight over the weekend and he really got into it. We let him have full creative control and I’m really glad that we did because we ended up with something very cool that he’s proud of, I mean he signed it.”
Mount, a local entrepreneur, recruited a Douglas High School art teacher to bring a smile to both trick or treaters and customers.
“That’s kind of our company mission statement, ‘Stay Nutty, Spread Smiles’ and so that’s really what we’re all about and Nerdy Nuts as a company it’s just something we try to do,” said Mount. “We just try to keep things fun, light-hearted, especially nowadays.”
Mount hopes someone rivals this jack-o-lantern masterpiece.
“I look at this like it’s the UFC, we have the belt now kind of thing. So, it’s like, Sioux Falls, where you at? We have the biggest pumpkin,” said Mount. “I wanted to say to Mayor Allender and Governor Noem, you’re welcome, we made you proud, we did it for you.”
