Greenfield Fun, Aug 11, 2009

Today, I am going to play a little catch-up. Actually we have left Greenfield, N.H (my home-town), and come to Maine -- we are now down east near Bar Harbor. But more about that in my next posting. I want to talk about out time in New Hampshire.

We came across an interesting set of structures, the Yankee Siege, in South Greenfield, across from the Yankee Farmer produce stand. For those who have not been to Greenfield for decades, this set of structures is on the site of the old Robbins home, the once the rather ugly house that was faced with field stones (i.e.rocks).

The Yankee Siege is a name given to a trebuchet, built by a dentist (who owns the produce stand) and his friends. A trebuchet is a type of catapult used in the siege of castles in medieval times. Below, is a picture of a placard on the bulletin board explaining how the trebuchet works. Basically it has a huge arm, to which is attached a sling. The trebuchet is energized with a counter weight.

A picture of the trebuchet (without the sling) is shown below.

The trebuchet is used every fall to sling pumpkins at a target castle. I am not clear how the distance is determined, but I suppose there must be some type of adjustment of the counterweight, or perhaps on the length of the ropes holding sling.

The picture to the left is of the target, a mock castle, some distance (perhaps 500-800 yards) from the trebuchet. Note the pumpkin patch in front of the castle. Late in October, the trebuchet is put in action --- firing pumpkins at and hopefully hitting the castle.

There are number of hobbyist who have built trebuchet, and this has become a competitive event --- the competition is called, Punkin Chunkin. I think the point of the competition is to see who can throw a pumpkin the furthermost. This years Punkin Chunkin is held in Nov 6, 7, and 8, near Bridgeville, Delaware.

For more information on the Yankee Siege, go to http://wwwyankeesiege.com/

There are other postings if you look up Yankee Siege, and Punkin Chunkin.

Another nice time we had in Greenfield was a gathering of the clan at my cousin's, Ginny's home. Some of her family was there, as well as children and grandchildren of my cousin, Muriel, and of course, my cousin, Peter. (Peter is now the volunteer firemen in Greenfield with the most experience in the volunteer fire department.)

To the left is a picture of three formerly deaf, but coclear implanted cousins: Ginny, Dan (me) and Muriel.