Pumpkin bumpkin
I though this was going to be another Trump article.
Things are getting real for outdoor pumpkin growers ahead of a European championship that starts in less than a week: a German team yesterday won the national heats with a near-800kg orange beast. A team from Bavaria beat 59 other growers from across the country to carve out the top prize at the Ludwigsburg Pumpkin festival on …
indeed. For our British cousins who might not know...
This event, held by the World Championship Punkin Chunkin Association, WAS a more or less annual thing until an accident at the 2016 event and subsequent lawsuit prompted cancellation of this year's event. Depending upon the outcome of the lawsuit, the event may or may not return. The videos of these events are interesting (and occasionally amusing, when highlighting the often colorful characters involved).
I will admit, after reading the details, that was a bit gruesome, and after giving it some thought, this is the kind of event that really can't escape Murphy's Law. I mean, Scrapheap Challenge and its US counterpart Junkyard Wars had seen many a catapult built (with a noted fondness for counterweight trebuchets), and even the MythBusters have done a few, but it's also easy to see how any of them could go wrong as well (some did go wrong, even). It's a difficult line to draw; where does it move from the builder's fault for not making it safe enough to being the spectator's fault for standing too close to the blasted thing?
We tried growing some pumpkins from some Giant Pumpkin seeds. We didn't work hard at it, no special treatment other than removing most of the excess fruits early on. We got a good sized pumpkin - 50 lbs. or so. But IMHO it was as close to inedible as pumpkin can get. So I wouldn't recommend using for pie without an excessive amount of spices and sugar!
The dirty little secret is that most "pumpkin" pies sold commercially are actually squash pies.
Still, pumpkins do make better missiles, being more spherical and brightly coloured.