Covenant College student Forrest Hunter, right, gets some air as he pulls ahead of fellow competitors Jay Pannkuk, center, and Roy Macgregor Saturday at the Pumpkin Smash Festival at Crabtree Farms. The festival was held to benefit the Chattanooga Area Food Bank.Nothing is worse than watching your pumpkin decay into mush, according to Sara McIntyre, executive director of Crabtree Farms.
“It is way more fun to watch your pumpkin get thrown,” she said.
On Saturday, Crabtree Farms, an urban farm off Rossville Boulevard, launched pumpkins from wooden trebuchets and asked the community to join them in the second annual Pumpkin Smash.
McIntyre said Crabtree decided to sponsor the event to encourage people to bring their pumpkins to the farm, where they can be turned into compost, instead of chucking them into a landfill. People who brought canned food for the Chattanooga Food Bank got in free.
Two teams from Roper Engineering in LaFayette, Ga., spent time over the past several weeks building large wooden trebuchets, said Mike Mahaney, a design engineer at Roper.
“It was a lot of fun for us to all work on this together,” he said.
Mahaney said a group of senior engineers built one trebuchet, a team of interns built another, and Crabtree staff built a third.
All three trebuchets were lined up in front of an open field where scarecrows marked a series of distances.
The trebuchets launched pumpkins more than 200 feet with one swift motion of their wooden arms, which were pulled back by ropes and released to throw the pumpkin in an arched trajectory as the crowd cheered.
Crabtree offered people more than pumpkin smashing, as there was an entire day of classic farm activities.
Kids played cornhole and competed in sack races as parents sipped coffee and beer. Bluegrass pickers gathered behind the barn and people mingled around small fires throughout the afternoon.
“The goal is to engage the community,” McIntyre said. “It’s just a play day for us all and the proceeds and donations go to funding our educational activities throughout the year.”
A group of students from Covenant College heard about the event and decided to attend.
Ellie Grenendyk said she came with her friends for the cider and to watch the pumpkin smashing.
“What I didn’t expect was to watch the boys chase a goat,” she said, laughing. “But I guess we are at a farm.”
Contact staff writer Kendi Anderson at kendi.anderson@timesfree press.com or at 423-757-6592.