Pumpkins in New Hampshire

It's slowly coming up on autumn, and so I figure I should mention the pumpkin thing. My wife, who wasn't born in the U.S., once asked me how to make pumpkin pie. "Well, first you open a can of pumpkin filling...." This answer was not what she wanted to hear; she wanted to make 'authentic' pumpkin pie from scratch. She called a friend of mine who used to do a lot of baking, and his response to her was, "Well, first you open a can of pumpkin filling..." Non-plussed, she turned to the internet and in short order had a recipe for pumpkin pie from scratch, which involved me gutting several pumpkins and handing her the orange goo, minus the seeds. (We bake the seeds.) I did end up with a pumpkin pie for all that work (with home-made whipped cream too!), but it certainly was one of my more labor-intensive pumpkin pies.

Which brings us to our thought for the day, which is what exactly should you be doing with a pumpkin, if not gutting it for pie or carving it for Halloween? (Those two are not mutually exclusive, mind you.) One thought is that you could, well, chuck it. Far. Really far. In fact, while you're at it, you could build yourself a medieval-style trebuchet and chuck that sucker really, really far. (Note: This is not recommended if you want to maintain hospitable relations with any nearby neighbors.) This is the thought process that Steve Seigars, Patrick Seigars, Michael Seigars, and Kathy Seigars -- four self-described "Yankee Farmers" -- apparently went through a few years back in Greenfield, New Hampshire when they built Yankee Siege, a modern day trebuchet designed specifically to lob pumpkins great distances, which they do for enthusiastic audiences all summer long. Not content to simply bombard fake castles (and the odd old pickup truck parked out back in the field), Yankee Siege competes every year in the World Championship Punkin Chunkin -- because they apparently managed to find a bunch of like-minded folks who somehow came to similar conclusions about what to do with spare pumpkins. Yankee Siege has won its category (adult trebuchet)at the World Championship Punkin Chunkin for the past six years. Yet another thing New Hampshirites do well: chunkin' punkins.

Incoming!!!!!!!!!!