It took five weeks but the 50-foot snowman Greg Novak has been building on his farm is Minnesota is finally done.
Its name is "Granddaddy" and Novak hopes it will wake onlookers from their winter doldrums, though he admits his creation has some neighbors questioning his sanity.
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Granddaddy began to take shape earlier this winter when the Gilman, Minn., farmer needed to move mounting snow piles away from his greenhouses, according to The Associated Press.
"As long as you're moving it, might as well do something practical with it," Novak said.
Friends and family pitched in to help with Granddaddy, or to do farm chores while Novak worked on building the snowman. Novak used skid loaders to pile snow and a silage blower to
direct snow into stacked cylinders, the St. Cloud Times reported.
Gerald and Diane Harbarth were among the amused onlookers Sunday. They drove more than 70 miles from Brownton to get a look at the mammoth snowman.
The Harbarths learned about Granddaddy on a television news report, but craning their necks to see it in person was something else entirely.
"This is unreal," Gerald Harbarth said.
For Novak, that was the whole point of creating Granddaddy.
"It puts a smile on people's faces," Novak said. "When people smile, you know you've done a good thing."
Granddaddy is but a mere child compared to efforts in the small community of Bethel, Maine, in 2008. Residents there claim the world record for the tallest snowperson, a 122-foot snowwoman named Olympia after the state's then-U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe.
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