BURLINGTON -- Hark! The success of Burlington’s great pumpkin-pitching trebuchets was their own undoing.

Their orange orbs traveled so fast, so far, from the catapult-style machines that they threatened to squash not only open land, but also to hit home and human.

Now Skagit County’s own team TreBarbaric — with a trebuchet that stands 78 feet tall, travels by semi-truck, and requires man, boom truck and crane eight hours for set-up — is headed not for the valley’s own Pumpkin Pitch but for Snohomish County, where a vast dairy farm will host the new Pumpkin Hurl.

It was TreBarbaric that inspired the new Hurl and a revamp of Burlington’s Pumpkin Pitch, which will be judged on accuracy rather than distance. Last year, the team sent a white pumpkin — chosen for its firmness and roundness — 1,866 feet, just 10 feet shy of the Skagit River Park boundary.

The toss won the competition and set a world record.

Recounts Sera Hartman: “Well and truly have the Trebuchets of the fair city Burlington historically served your defenses. So well, in fact, that legend has it that payloads of last year nearly assaulted the walls of your own castles by their mighty flight.”

Hartman works for the Northwest Agriculture Business Center, which is organizing Snohomish County’s hurl, and happens to be a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval recreation group.

“As swift as the traced arc of golden squash on a clear day came the grave realization that the beasts that had so well defended these treasured lands could soon become the instrument of the town’s undoing,” Hartman wrote by e-mail. “And so with heavy hearts did the warriors seek a vaster plain upon which to practice their art.”

Carolyn Eslick, also of the Northwest Agriculture Business Center, is the Pumpkin Hurl event manager. She found that “vaster plain,” the 500-acre Bartelheimer Farm, which will easily accommodate pumpkin tosses of 3,000 feet.

“It is incredible,” said Scott Wakeman, a TreBarbaric team leader from Sedro-Woolley. “There is unlimited distance, width and length.”

Christi Kinney, Burlington’s recreation coordinator, tried to keep the distance contest in Burlington or nearby. But when she found that no practical place existed to host both the city’s Pumpkin Pitch and the Burlington Chamber of Commerce’s Harvest Festival, she was just happy that someone would continue the distance contest and that the long-range trebuchets would not go to waste.

“Here we have got these machines being built for further distances,” she said. “I felt we had an obligation to find another location.”

“It is still going to be exciting,” Kinney said of the Pumpkin Pitch’s new accuracy competition. “... Because 100 years ago that is what trebuchets were built for, to hit a target and destroy it.”

Unfortunately, said TreBarbaric’s Wakeman, his team’s trebuchet was built for might, not precision.

“When you pull the trigger, that releases the counterweight, which drops the arm and slings the pumpkin out and causes the pumpkin to go,” he said.

Getting that pumpkin to go far is their specialty, but getting it to stay in bounds and hit a precise target is not, he said.

Last year, 10 teams from the Skagit Valley, Canada, Snohomish County and elsewhere in the region competed in Burlington’s Pumpkin Pitch, and about 6,000 people came just to watch.

Six years ago, when Burlington started the competition, teams were only tossing about 1,000 feet, and only about 250 people showed up.

For her first event in Snohomish County, Eslick said six teams have registered so far, and she is hoping for about 2,000 spectators. She has never been to a pumpkin tossing competition but plans to see how things go at the Pumpkin Pitch, which is scheduled for the weekend before the Pumpkin Hurl.

And she already has some unique touches planned for the Pumpkin Hurl. Hartman and others from the Society for Creative Anachronism will attend in medieval garb and will demonstrate hand-on-hand combat wearing armor and carrying shield and sword.

Hartman has dabbled in archery and knife throwing, but said she had never heard of pumpkin throwing before the event preparations.

“I have heard of hurling events with pianos, VWs. People hurl all sorts of things,” she said.

Elliott Wilson can be reached at 360-416-2147 or ewilson@skagit valleyherald.com.