yes the above picture is of a trebuchet. yes this trebuchet was designed to throw the pumpkins in that wheelbarrow beside it all the way across the field you see in the picture. no i unfortunately did not get to see it operated.
as i told you yesterday we were going to see the pumpkin trebuchet operated today. it’s located 15 miles away from us in wisconsin rapids. the pumpkin farm advertizes that it will operate the trebuchet at 1 p.m. therefore, pam, noah, and i drove over to wisconsin rapids and made it there 5-10 minutes before 1 p.m. we were full of excitement at the possibility of seeing pumkins take flight. what we didn’t realize was that these medieval catapults were apparently no designed to operate in small drizzles and strong breezes. at least that’s what we were told by the trebuchet operator.
it changes my whole view of medieval warfare. apparently war only took place in the middle ages on calm, sunny days. i assume that it made the horrific aspect of war a little easier to deal with just knowing that if a storm cloud crossed the sky there was always the possibility of a war rain delay.
anyhow, here are two more pictures from the afternoon. the first is pam trying to make noah turn his head for a photo (adam was away at a birthday party) and the second is a pumpkin interpretation of obama and mccain.
SIDE NOTE – below is the video we showed tonight at tapestry that matthew made.
I was going to suggest that you guys go and check out the trebuchet that the Roloff family from the TLC show “Little People, Big World” have on their farm. Before I did that, I checked Google Maps to see how far it would be. Apparently Oregon is nowhere near Wisconsin.
I really suck at geography.
really? i couldn’t tell that geography wasn’t your strong suit. 😉