Composting Authority Certifies Record 21-Day Jack-o’-Lantern-to-Soil Conversion

PORT ASTER — The Port Aster Pumpkin Disposal Authority announced Thursday that it has officially certified a new municipal record: the complete conversion of a carved jack-o’-lantern into finished compost in just 21 days, shattering the previous record of 34 days set during “the soggy autumn of 2022.”

“Twenty-one days, from porch to soil,” said Harlan Voss, the Authority’s Chief Gourd Officer, displaying a mason jar of dark, crumbly compost to reporters. “This jar was a pumpkin with a face. It had a crooked smile and one eyebrow raised, judgmentally. Now it is soil. There is a lesson in there about impermanence, but we are a disposal authority, not philosophers.”

The record-setting gourd — a 12-pound field pumpkin carved with what Voss described as “a classic triangle-eyes arrangement, executed with above-average knife confidence” — was processed at the Authority’s central composting facility, where it was quartered, mixed with shredded leaf litter at a precise 3-to-1 carbon ratio, and monitored daily by technicians with thermometers and “a genuine emotional investment.”

Key to the record, Voss explained, was the pumpkin’s pre-compost condition. “It had been on a porch for nine days. It was soft. It was, in the technical term, ‘ready.’ A fresh pumpkin fights you. A nine-day porch pumpkin has already begun negotiating its own surrender.”

The Authority’s composting protocol — documented in Technical Bulletin PB-11, “Accelerated Gourd Humification” — calls for quartering, a 140-degree internal pile temperature, and turning every 72 hours. “We turn on schedule,” Voss said. “The pile does not care about your weekend plans. The pile is a professional.”

Not all conversions go so smoothly. The Authority also reported its slowest decomposition of the season: a pumpkin coated in three layers of acrylic craft paint — “a full glitter situation,” Voss said — that after 60 days “looks exactly the same and has, if anything, gained confidence.” The painted pumpkin has been quarantined in a demonstration bin labeled “DO NOT EMULATE.”

Residents are reminded that the curbside compost pilot accepts pumpkins free of candles, glitter, googly eyes, and “structural toothpicks, which survive everything, including — we have tested this — the grinder.”

The record-setting compost will be bagged and distributed at the Authority’s spring giveaway under the label “Formerly Festive.” Voss said demand is already high. “People want soil with a story,” he said. “This soil watched the neighborhood from a porch for nine days. It has seen things. Now it will grow tomatoes.”