Friday, September 9, 2022

Pumpkins Fly in 16 Days - September 25th - 13th Annual VT Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival

There are now only 16 days until the 13th Annual Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival. Fall comes early in Vermont. We have the festival in the early part of fall (this year on Sunday, September 25th) because the weather is usually great, the leaves are already starting to turn colors, and with the start of school and all that, it feels like a fresh start. So, mark your calendars and tell all your friends.

We are so pleased and excited to have House Dunn again providing the music at the festival this year. House Dunn plays mostly covers of "90's to Now" hits, with a few originals thrown in. Some of their set list includes Adele, Gotye, Blind Melon, Of Monsters and Men, The Lumineers, and Train.

Also, kids or anyone else, it is not too late to become part of the action. Building a simple Stapleton "Walking Arm" trebuchet and competing in the VTPC contest is very straight forward. Here is our introduction on how to quickly build the elegant and powerful Stapleton "Walking Arm" trebuchet. 

Our lightweight division for children age 10 and under only needs a relatively small 20 lbs., 41" trebuchet to compete.  Middleweight size trebuchets for teenagers or the adult division need to be under 100 lbs. and 70." These smaller scale trebuchets that can still throw hundreds of feet make the VTPC unique among the fall pumpkin chuckin' contests. These smaller trebuchets can still compete for best overall trebuchet by virtue of the scaling of their size that goes into awarding the "Best Design." Each of our divisions is 1.71 times taller than the division below it so they can easily be compared against each other to award an overall "Best Design."

Here is our entry information and rules page for anyone who is interested. If you have any questions or need and any clarification about the chuckin' or the festival, please contact our festival organizer, Dave Jordan, at phone: (603) 630-4800 or email: DJordan@gmavt.net.

As a rewarding footnote, VTPC also might be the only fall pumpkin chuckin' contest that offers prize money to its winners in each division.

By the way, do you know what the difference is between a catapult and a trebuchet? Well, it's a toss-up... Anyway, hope to see you all soon at the 13th VTPC.