While some people may be carving pumpkins this time of year, others spent the weekend chucking them into the sky at the annual Pumpkin Chuckin’ event in Stowe on Sunday.It was the 13th annual event.“All it takes is one good chuck to win it,” said Dave Jordan, the Pumpkin Chuckin’ Festival founder.The goal of the competition is to see which engineer has the best trebuchet that can fling a pumpkin the farthest. “It’s really a design contest. You don’t have to build it out of wood... you just do whatever design you want but this one's very efficient,” Jordan said. More than 1,000 spectators gathered in Stowe on Sunday to watch how far the trebuchets could fling pumpkins off into the sky. “I was up here last year and really enjoyed it, we’re back here for vacation and my wife wanted to come and check it out again,” said one traveler, David Hughes, who drove to the event from Connecticut. The Pumpkin Chuckin’ Festival gives longtime friends like Michael Minne and Nick Helms an opportunity to put their engineering skills to the test. “It's just something else to do. We’ve run the same design for many years and just wanted to try something fun,” they said.Jordan started the annual event 14 years ago after coming across a trebuchet on the side of the road in his travels. He wanted to provide an outlet for people in the community to get creative. “The first time, we had maybe 200 people show up and only six contestants and now we have over 1,000 spectators a year,” Jordan said.With the event’s growth in popularity, it moved to new, larger location in Stowe this year, off of Weeks Hill Road.Nine contestants competed to see how far they could chuck a pumpkin with trebuchets they built on their own for a cash prize of $100. The price of admission for all of the spectators went toward the Clarina Howard Nichols Center in Morrisville, Vermont.“It’s just a great fun community event that raises some awesome resources for us that we can use to fill the gaps that we need,” said Clarina Howard Nichols Center Executive Director Becky Gonyea.The organization's mission is to end domestic and sexual violence in Lamoille County. Last year, the Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival raised $10,000 for their organization.“Right now, really the past six months to a year, we’ve been busier than ever. Our shelter has been really busy,” Gonyea said.Gonyea says she and Jordan are looking forward to finding more ways to help people in the community by pairing this newfound fall tradition in Stowe with helping more people in need.