Winter Fun On The Farm

This is the furthest back of the property you can go easily. Behind this is wooded forest with some trails for firewood collection, water-line maintenance and horse riding of course. The forest behind here seems to go forever. Perspective: If you walked in the wrong direction from here. And you covered 5 miles a day. You might not see civilization for two months. Maybe never if you walked in the really wrong direction. Ooohh... Spooky...

Anyways... We had to venture into the spooky, not, forest to get kindling for the bon-fire. While we're there I noticed some rails laying around (dead fallen saplings). Hmmm I thought... Can I use those. Next thing you know I had collected enough forest slag to construct a 'Trebuchet'. Ok... A small trebuchet. An experimental version.

Thanks to my most hated resource on the farm. Binder twine. What they hold hay bails together with. We managed to build a small, primitive, trebuchet using a rock for the counter-balance. The real beauty of this is that I own a property large enough to build a full scale version and play with it without the fear of hurting anyone but myself. Well... Time to test the prototype.

Wow... Not bad for a few hours of leisure time. But then again do you really expect an ancient siege weapon to have been that difficult to engineer. Sorry 'History-Channel'. Even with our minimum counter-balance we were able to propel an object 30 percent the weight of our ballast ten times as far as our swing. Our biggest failure was the sling. The sling is what differentiates the trebuchet from the catapult. The sling, which utilizes a gear like effect, multiplies the delivery force making the trebuchet a first class med-evil weapon. Capable of launching (by today's standards) cars, pianos, big boulders (all on fire of course).

What more could anybody want... Except for lunch that is. This isn't the first time We've been privy to this. It is a real tradition here. You drag your food and drink someplace. Light a fire. Drink a bunch. Then cook your food on the fire. Lovely.

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