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Smashing pumpkins supports Okotoks youth

Second annual Pumpkin Chunkin' event brings in 100 pounds of food, $800 in support of children's activities

Smashing pumpkins took a little ingenuity and a lot of hard work for a group of Scouts this weekend.

The 1st Okotoks Scouts Venturer Company entered the Okotoks Optimist Club’s second annual Pumpkin Chunkin’ competition with a trebuchet built from felled tree logs tied together with rope, with tires as counter-balance and a cast-iron pan attached to its arm to hold the pumpkin as it launched into the air.

After successfully building and practising over the last few weeks, the Scouts were disappointed when their machine fell over with its first launch of the day – but they didn’t back down from the challenge.

“The tires we were using were too much weight and it was kind of pulling down the structure,” said David Banks, one of three Venturer Scouts who headed up the project. “It fell down and we had to rethink it.”

Their redesign on-site meant rather than two people holding the rope, releasing it to allow gravity to pull down the tires on the back-end and throw the pumpkin, the machine became man-powered.

The tires were removed from the back of the trebuchet and instead, a line of scouts pulled it as they ran, raising the firing arm and letting the weight of two front-end tires add some torque.

There were lessons learned, but everyone was proud of a job well done and the skill they earned along the way.

“It gave us a good chance to work on our pioneering skills, attaching the logs with string and knots – that was beneficial to all of us, I think,” said Josh Heuver, who provided the logs from trees on his family acreage.

He said they were inspired by a photo on the Scouts Canada website for building a trebuchet and the Venturers took it from there, adapting the photo to their own design, and within budget.

For Henry La Croix, the competition was a good opportunity to gain skills he hadn’t learned before as the scouts worked on their machine once or twice per week for about a month.

“I didn’t even know how to tie the knots before this project,” said La Croix. “There were lots of skills we learn regularly in Scouts, too.”

Three pumpkins were thrown by the human-powered machine, and each flew a little further with encouragement and advice from experienced pumpkin-launchers Guy and Paul Giroux.

The Giroux brothers manned two trebuchets – one they had built for the inaugural Pumpkin Chunkin’ in 2019, and a bigger, badder version built this year that had a longer arm, a wider girth and heavier cement block counterweight.

“We learned from last year and just thought about what we might change, and built this one with some new touches,” said Paul, who was celebrating his birthday with the pumpkin launch event.

They broke their distance record of about 200 feet, with one pumpkin landing an impressive 400 feet away from the launch site.

Brad Pond, Okotoks Optimist Club member and organizer of the event, said despite the cold wintery weather on Oct. 17, the turnout and support was encouraging. Last year, there was only the Giroux entry and so it became more of an exhibition event.

He said it was exciting to have the 1st Okotoks Scouts come out this year and see how they adapted on the fly.

“That’s the kind of thing you see and next year they’re going to come back bigger and better and stronger, I think,” said Pond.

The mishap with the Scouts’ machine is all part of the fun, he said, adding the trebuchets can be “fickle beasts.”

“They were on their social media and it was launching really well apparently before the event, and then you get to the event and it falls apart,” said Pond. “That’s sort of part of the fun, too, is the challenge and just enjoying the process and working through it.”

Spectators were able to purchase pumpkins and write their names on them to have them sent through the air by one of the trebuchets in the field outside Country Living and Garden Centre.

The Optimist Club raised about 100 pounds of food for the Okotoks Food Bank and $800 to support children’s activities in the community at the event, up from the approximately $500 brought in last year. Pond said he thinks the event would have been bigger had the weather co-operated.

Cold weather also meant some of the extra activities for youngsters, like firing oranges at a large painted virus target named COVID Carl with a slingshot had to be cancelled, because the temperature made sanitizing everything in between children prohibitive.

Pond said he hopes to have more entries in 2021. There were supposed to be five competitors out this year, but three backed out at the last minute.

“They were supposed to have catapults and trebuchets, and the morning of the event they backed out for technical difficulties, they couldn’t get their things to fire right,” he said.

That posed somewhat of a challenge for the event organizers and the Girouxs, who were the only ones launching all the charity pumpkins into the air for the afternoon.

With each toss, the trebuchet has to be reset, which means pulling down the 600-pound cement weights with body strength or cranking a winch, and it got a little exhausting when the pumpkins were coming in fast and furious.

It made for longer breaks between launches when the team needed to take a break, something that would be avoided with more people involved, he said.

“If we would have had five or six or 10 competitors, we could have gone in some order, taking a break, playing to the crowd, launching again,” said Pond.

That will all come in time, he said. They’re happy to see the event grow slowly for its first few years as more people become aware of it and try their hand at building structures.

Ideally, he’d like to see friendly competition out in the field with businesses, service clubs, groups and organizations trying to outdo one another.

“If anyone thinks they have the gourds to build a trebuchet for next year, reach out to us,” said Pond.

The Okotoks Optimist Club can be found on Facebook and Instagram.

Krista Conrad, OkotoksToday.ca

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