Yesterday we were looking for some destination to justify a leaf-peeping expedition for the afternoon. It’s nice enough to drive the back roads and enjoy the scenery, but we are always happier if there’s something at the end of the road worth visiting. Last year, our trek took us to a tiny little gift shop at the top of a twisting, muddy rutted road near Greenville, New Hampshire and from there to the peak of Pack Monadnock, the baby brother of Mt. Monadnock. But we didn’t want to repeat ourselves, and so Bridget scoured some websites looking for ideas.
What she found was this: Yankee Siege, a massive iron trebuchet that lives on a farm in Greenfield, New Hampshire, about an hour’s ride from our house. The Yankee Siege is the current World’s Champion of the international Punkin’ Chunkin’ Competition held annually in Delaware. Every fall, as they practice hurling ten-pound pumpkins to warm up for the competition, the Yankee Siege team opens their field to the public to come and watch.
Well, the drive, which was pretty much straight up Route 3 to Nashua and then across State Highway 101, wasn’t all that scenic, I’m afraid, since most of it consisted of the Nashua malls, but the destination made it all worthwhile. We got there around 2:30 just as they were about to fire off a shot. The crowd was actually pretty large; about as many people as you might find at a small apple-picking venue. At one end of the field is a mock-up of a castle, complete with stone walls, and at the other is the absolutely massive trebuchet.
The base of the trebuchet is over 50 feet tall, and with the complete throwing arm reaches 63.5 feet in height. It is capable of launching a payload of up to 300 pounds and uses almost 6 tons of counterweight ballast. That’s a lot of power to hurl a medium-sized pumpkin, and they hold the world record distance at 1702 feet. Unofficially, they have gone over 2000 feet, and they hope to achieve that in competition this year.
They do several throws over the course of an afternoon, about once every half hour, to accommodate the visitors. In between, there is time to explore the castle, get up close to the trebuchet, check out the other things they have on display, and, of course, spend money on snacks and souvenirs (I got a t-shirt!). They also operate a farm stand, where we bought a large pumpkin. Now, if I only had a trebuchet!
Unlike our unhappy apple picking experience last weekend, we all had a blast watching the trebuchet, riding in an ox-cart, and enjoying what scenery we could on the ride. I will definitely want to go see this awesome machine in operation again. Here’s a video I shot using my digital camera of the trebuchet in action:
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