‘Farmer Mike’ Marks 40 Years of Giant Pumpkin Carving at Half Moon Bay

Mike Valladao, a systems engineer at a cybersecurity company who transforms each autumn into his overalls-clad alter ego “Farmer Mike”—known nationally as the “Picasso of Pumpkin Carvers”—celebrated 40 years of live pumpkin sculpting this fall at the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival, according to an Associated Press profile published by KCBS Radio.

Without formal art training, Valladao began growing giant pumpkins at his San Jose home in the mid-1980s and started carving faces into the massive gourds. In 1986, organizers of the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival—in the coastal town where Valladao’s family opened the first feed and seed store in the 19th century—invited him to carve live on stage during the two-day festival.

Sculpting 100- to 1,000-Pound Atlantic Pumpkins ‘One Layer at a Time’

Working with thick-skinned Atlantic pumpkins weighing between 100 and 1,000 pounds (45 to 454 kilograms), Valladao carves three-dimensional ghoulish faces, witches, dragons, seaside landscapes, and pop-culture figures such as Yoda and Charlie Brown.

“I’m an engineer by trade and I tend to look at it as building something the same way I would build a piece of hardware, one layer at a time,” Valladao said. “It’s really about the illusion of depth. I can make it so that it’s three-dimensional, such that the eyes are inset and the nose sticks out.”

Over the past four decades, Valladao once grew an 800-pound (363-kilogram) pumpkin of his own and has been invited to carve on The Tonight Show as well as at the California Academy of Sciences, the San Diego Zoo, and the State Fair of Texas.