We had a mostly clear day at the Mayo Event Fields in Stowe for the thirteenth annual Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival with 9 teams competing in the chuck, 4 teams in the Chili Cookoff, 3 food trucks, 31 volunteers, and over 1000 spectators enjoying the chuckin', chili, food, band, kid activities, volleyball tournament, games and a tortoise roaming the field. We believe we have the longest active-running trebuchet contest in the US. Over $14,000 was raised for the Clarina Howard Nichols Center (Morrisville) whose staff and volunteers did an amazing job running the festival. The Clarina Howard Nichols Center is doing great work combating domestic and sexual violence and they did a fantastic job running the festival for the fourth year in a row!
Two new event records by the Stapleton dynasty and their amazing “Walking Arm” design: Once again the Stapleton family with their unique “walking arm” trebuchet design dominated the competition with 2 new event records in both the middleweight and heavyweight divisions. Because their design is superior and Jonathan Stapleton was nice enough to put up a tutorial on how to build and scale their design on instructables.com, their design was copied by most of the other competitors, only 1 floating arm design, 1 King Arthur design, and none of the 1000-year-old standard design were represented, whereas in the first festival (2009) ALL of the trebuchets were of the standard 1000-year-old design. Check out the past year's festival summary below to see how the design and best distances have evolved from 2009 to 2022.
Jonathan Stapleton's Walking Arm Trebuchet threw a 5 lb. pumpkin 798 ft.
Why the Walking Arm design is the best in the world:
The current world record for throwing an 8-pound pumpkin with a trebuchet is 3,377 feet set in 2019 by Colossal Thunder at Punkin Chunkin, Rantoul, Illinois. This is a staggering accomplishment, but they were not limited by height and weight like our festival. By limiting the height and weight in each division we ensure that each competitor has exactly the same amount of potential energy, so their success or failure comes down to efficiency in design and implementation. The theoretical maximum distance a trebuchet can throw is 2 x (weight of trebuchet) x (height of trebuchet) / (weight of pumpkin). In our competition, a heavyweight trebuchet is limited to 500 pounds (total weight) and 10 feet (height) so the theoretical limit that a heavyweight trebuchet can throw a 5-pound pumpkin is 2x500x10/5 = 2000 feet. This is theoretical because we are ignoring air resistance, and friction and assuming that the arm and frame weigh zero and all 500 pounds is in the counterweight. Jonathan Stapleton’s heavyweight threw 780 feet out of a possible 2000 so its efficiency is 780/2000 or 39%. Colossal Thunder’s height is 24 feet, and the counterweight alone is 5000 pounds so the theoretical limit it can throw an 8-pound pumpkin is 2x5000x24/8 = 30,000 feet. Since it threw 3,377 its efficiency is 3,377/30,000 or 11%. If Colossal Thunder design was scaled down to compete in our festival in the heavyweight category it would throw 228 feet. If Colossal Thunder actually entered our heavyweight competition their 3,377-foot throw would have been “adjusted” for being overweight and over height to make it fair for the other competitors. Since we weigh the total trebuchet, not just the counterweight, Colossal Thunder would be awarded less than 190 feet assuming that their frame and arm weighed at least 1000 pounds. This is not to say that Colossal Thunder isn’t a laudable marvel in its own right — merely that in our engineering-focused competition it can’t measure up. Another indicator of the walking arm’s efficiency is the movement or lack of movement after the pumpkin has left the trebuchet. The arm simply falls to the ground after the throw. This shows that almost all of the potential energy in the counterweight has been efficiently transferred to kinetic energy in the pumpkin. Colossal Thunder’s arm and counterweight are still thrashing around long after the pumpkin has left indicating lots of wasted energy since all the motion of those heavy parts had to come from somewhere. By measuring efficiency, the walking arm design beats Colossal Thunder by 39% to 11%.
First annual Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Invitational Volleyball Quads tournament:
Ryan Rabidou promoted and ran a volleyball tournament with ten teams during the festival gathering the best players in Vermont and New York. The winners of the $100 cash prize were Ryan Rabidou, Nick Pizzuti, Alex Richard, and Jeremiah Ward. Second place went to Carter Peck, Shawn McBride, Lauren Brough, and Michala Dean. Next year Ryan anticipates a much bigger tournament with as many as 20 teams.
Dolores the Tortoise:
Kelly Carrick brought Dolores, her well-behaved 30-pound tortoise to enjoy the festival. During the 2nd round, Dolores happened to be enjoying the festival directly in front of a huge catapult preparing to fire a 5-pound pumpkin. Kelly was alerted to the impending danger and instructed Dolores to crawl out of the way. She started crawling at a glacial pace when Kelly picked her up and moved her out of harm’s way. Shortly thereafter the pumpkin fired in a line drive and rolled directly over the patch of grass that Dolores just vacated. Thirteen years of pumpkin chucking and no people or tortoises have been harmed!
Past year's festival summary:
Each year people ask how many teams compete, what type of design won and what
distance was the best throw. So here is a summary of interesting facts:
YEAR teams Division Design Winner distance (feet)
2009 6 Heavyweight standard Dave Barrows 139
2010 18 Middleweight standard Wayne Powell 230
2011 14 Middleweight float arm Tobey Betthauser 223
2012 18 Middleweight float arm Dwight Snowberger 437
2013 19 Middleweight float arm Dwight Snowberger 596
2014 12 Middleweight King Arthur Don Jordan 513
2015 26 Heavyweight float arm Chris McGrody 520
2016 18 Heavyweight King Arthur Dave Jordan 689
2017 12 Middleweight float arm Ray Chamberlin 509
2018 17 Lightweight Walk Stick Orion Stapleton 780
2019 14 Lightweight Walk Stick Orion Stapleton 658
2020 0 Not held due to COVID-19
2021 10 Heavyweight Walk Stick Jonathan Stapleton 750
2022 9 Middleweight Walk Stick Orion Stapleton 810
Results of the trebuchet contest (all distances adjusted based on height and weight):
Lightweight Division (age 10 and under, trebuchet limited to 20 lbs. and 41”)
No contestants this year.
Middleweight Junior Division (age 17 and under, trebuchet limited to 100 lbs. and 70”)
1st place $100 cash: Orion Stapleton, 810 feet.
2nd place $50 cash: Owen Christman, 429 feet.
Middleweight Open Division: (any age, trebuchet limited to 100 lbs. and 70”)
1st place $100 cash: Tyler Barnard, 483 feet.
2nd place $50 cash: Steve McCann, 435 feet.
3rd place no cash: Dave Jordan, 0 feet.
Heavyweight Division: (any age, trebuchet limited to 500 lbs. and 120”)
1st place $100 cash: Jonathan Stapleton, 792 feet.
2nd place $50 cash: Nick Helms, 262 feet.
Grand Prize Best Design $50 cash: Orion Stapleton, 810 feet.
Chili Cookoff:
The chili cookoff was a great success with four competitors and running out of chili
before the end of the festival.
1st place $100 cash: Deb Longe
2nd place $50 cash: Carter Peck
Tied for 3rd place $25 cash each to: Lyn Goldsmith and Charley Pineles-Mark.
Sponsors:
Two Sons, Community National Bank, Commodities Natural Market, Union Bank, Piecasso Pizzeria and Lounge, Coldwell Banker/Carlson Real Estate, In Company, Leaves of Change VT, Cork Restaurant and Natural Wine Shop, Nye Mechworks, Points North Physical Therapy, Nichols and Associates/Attorneys at Law, The MSI Group, N.A. Manosh, Donald P. Blake, Jr. Inc., Yellow Turtle, Genevieve Thompson Pilates, Edwards Jones - Caren Merson, Casella and the Stowe UPS Store.
Volunteers:
Thanks for Becky Gonyea and her planning, promoting, leadership and army of volunteers which did everything from setup, running the chili cookoff, ticketing, kid activities and cleanup afterwards. Thanks to House Dunn (Mike, Isabella, Jocelyn and Julie) for bringing their band and audio support for the event. Thanks to Sean Morrissey and Jake St. Pierre for being the masters of ceremonies, Amy and Molly for registration and distance recording, to Brian Yeaton and his Stowe HS students for parking, setup and accurately and efficiently measuring the distances. Thanks for Ryan Rabidou for promoting, organizing and running the first annual Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin Invitational Volleyball Quads tournament and to Mike Adams for using his drone and video editing skills to produce an awesome video of the event, free of charge. The video will be up on our Facebook page soon if it isn’t already there. Thanks for Princess Dolores the Tortoise and her partner Kelly Carrick.
Please contact me with any suggestions for next year's festival or corrections to this
document. Djordan@gmavt.net
We look forward to the next festival, Sept. 24th, 2022 October 1st, 2023, at the Mayo Field in Stowe.
Dave Jordan
Festival organizer
161 Henway Road
Morrisville, VT 05661