There is at least one situation when packing on nearly 400 pounds in a single year is a win.

Just ask Joel Holland.

“Think thin” might be the mantra of our body-image beleaguered society, but for Holland, a retired firefighter and Puyallup-based farmer specializing in giant pumpkins, bigger is better. Big is beautiful.

Holland delivered the annual giant pumpkin to the downtown Winslow Johansson Clark Real Estate officeWednesday for its yearly holiday display. This year’s great gourd tipped the scale at 1,422 pounds — 392more than last year’s.

The farmer, who credits more rain and a hotter summer for the pumpkin’s primo poundage this year,reclaimed the state record for largest pumpkin earlier this month with a 1,792-pounder, which is now on display at Central Market in Shoreline. His weighty wares have been purchased for display by major league sports teams, Paul Allen, the restaurant atop the Space Needle and Elysian Brewery in Seattle.

The yearly arrival and coordinated delivery involving Holland, a forklift and operators on loan from theWashington State Ferry shipyard maintenance facility and additional assistance from Town & Country market employees, to the sidewalk outside Johansson Clark Real Estate, has become a much-loved community tradition, a seasonal spectacle which did not fail to once again draw a crowd of curious passersby earlier this week.

At the peak of their growth cycle, Holland’s largest pumpkins can gain 30 to 40 pounds a day — for as long as two weeks at a time. They tend to grow better in hot, wet weather.

The average pie, he added, contains about two pounds of pumpkin, meaning the giant currently outside Johansson Clark Real Estate could make about 711 pies.