Cloudy skies, a cold wind, bursts of rain and muddy grounds couldn’t keep the spectators from gathering to watch the pumpkins fly. Pumpkins fly? They do at the Canadian Punkin Chuckin Championships in Kemble. For the past 3 years this event has been held in Kemble, Ontario, (about three hours north west of Toronto) and teams have built a variety of contraptions all in the hopes of being able to launch a pumpkin the furthest. Punkin Chuckin isn’t the only thing on the ballot though, it’s a weekend long event which also includes a property decorating contest, carnival games, haunted house and Halloween dance.
Teams can enter their pumpkin chuckers into one of five categories: trebuchets, floating arm trebuchets, catapults, air powered canons and human power assisted. While each of the launchers were fun to watch, the crowd favourite was certainly the compressed air powered Jack-O-Launcher which could send pumpkins an incredible 2040 feet. Honourable mentions in the crowd pleasing department go to the two catapults that fired backwards into the mass of onlookers. Near death experiences are always cause for some excitement.
Through four rounds of punkin chuckin people stuck it out in the mud and the rain, seeking shelter in the beer tent when necessary. Local goodies were also on sale such as butter tarts from the Balmy Beach Bakery. But if getting dry was what you were after, there was no better way than with a bowl of pumpkin chili and a sandwich, made and served to you by the lovely gals from the Women’s Institute. If you happened to make it through to the final round of punkin chuckin, you were rewarded with your choice of leftover pumpkins to take home to carve or to turn into pie, (I did both!).
I actually made a sour cream pumpkin pie with caramel sauce on top, but I didn’t take a picture, so here’s a pumpkin pie I made last year. Clearly this post is lacking in the food department, but I hope it has taught all you city dwellers the truth about pumpkins: Not only are they tasty and make great decoration, but they fly exceptionally well! If we’re ever invaded around Halloween, the Kemble canons have got us covered…
8 comments:
wow that is great, how fun of a festival would that be.
You've heard the expression, "When pigs fly..."? Now I can say, "When pumpkins fly..."!!!! Looks like great fun.
that event looks like a lot of fun! 2040 feet! wow!
This is a great way to get the community together to celebrate Hallowe'en.
you crazy canadians! to be fair, pumpkin chucking sounds like something we'd do where i'm from (the illustrious american south), if only we could grow pumpkins there. actually, instead of chucking them, we'd probably shoot them with rifles. it's the redneck way.
Punkin Chunkin! They do that here on the Eastern Shore in Delaware. As a kid, some of my family's friends would practice launching their trebuchet on our farm because it was big enough to contain flying pumpkins. Hope you had fun!
Funny how I never knew about these things when I lived near Toronto!
How fun!!! I came back from a visit to my parents with a pumpkin in the trunk, gotta try recipes now!
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