Clay County North Carolina Punkin Chunkin Festival
Every October, a field in Clay County becomes a proving ground for backyard engineering. Machines of timber, steel, rope and compressed air hurl pumpkins across the sky while families watch from lawn chairs. The Punkin Chunkin Festival is the Clay County Chamber of Commerce’s autumn harvest weekend, split across two places visitors should not confuse: a Friday-evening cook-off on the Historic Hayesville Square, and two festival days at 811 Settawig Road in Brasstown. Hayesville is the county seat, and it hosts only the Friday kickoff. The main festival belongs to Brasstown, an unincorporated community in the same county.
About the Festival
The festival is built around a single spectacle: the chunkin itself. Catapults, air cannons, trebuchets and other powerful machines toss pumpkins, in the Chamber’s own billing, up to several thousand feet, in a contest between champion pumpkin chunkers. That distance is the Chamber’s billing, not a measured record for this event. Around the field are pie-eating contests, live entertainment, food and craft vendors, Old Time Tractors on display with hay rides, and a Kidzone.
The festival is sponsored by the Clay County Chamber of Commerce, in its full published form the Clay County NC Chamber of Commerce. No separate festival association or chunkin association is named in any Chamber layer, and none is invented here. The Chamber’s own pages give the practical record plainly: two sites, one October weekend, five dollars admission and five dollars parking, children under five free. The record gives no edition number for 2023 through 2026, no computable founding year, and no Friday taster-ticket price, and this article fills none of those gaps.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Festival | Punkin Chunkin Festival, sponsored by the Clay County Chamber of Commerce |
| Friday kickoff | Anything Pumpkin and Chili Cook-off, Friday evening on the Historic Hayesville Square, Hayesville |
| Main festival | Saturday and Sunday on the field at 811 Settawig Road, Brasstown |
| County seat | Hayesville, which hosts the Friday kickoff only |
| Current edition | Friday, October 16, Saturday, October 17 and Sunday, October 18, 2026 |
| Field hours | Nine in the morning to five in the afternoon, Saturday and Sunday |
| Launch sessions | Ten in the morning to half past twelve, and half past one to half past four, both days |
| Admission | Five dollars, children under five free |
| Parking | Five dollars |
| Field rules | No pets or firearms allowed, and visitors are asked to bring a lawn chair |
History
The festival’s history is documented in layers that agree on its shape and disagree on its count. The Brasstown community record states the two-day festival has been held on Settawig Road in Brasstown since 2009. A 2012 announcement layer bills that year’s festival the fourth annual, consistent with a 2009 start, recorded here as billing only. An early magazine account calls the contest then in its fourth year, but that layer’s year is unfixed and its billing conflicts with the 2012 layer. A 2025 magazine account says the resident expert chunker helped kick off the western North Carolina event fifteen years earlier, an approximation in its year, never a founding date. The Chamber’s pages from 2023 through 2026 publish no edition number at all, so no edition number, founding year or uninterrupted run is asserted, and no gap year is claimed, since no cancellation is documented.
The weekend’s shape traces year by year: the Chamber’s 2023 document fixes October 20 for the cook-off and October 21 and 22, nine to five, for the festival; travel layers agreeing with the Chamber record give October 19 and 20, 2024, nine to five; a 2025 magazine account gives October 18 and 19, 2025 for the main festival, with some listings folding the Friday kickoff into a three-day span, recorded as that layer’s counting and never as a three-day main festival. The current edition, on the Chamber’s own pages, is October 16, 2026 for the cook-off and October 17 and 18, 2026, nine to five, for the field days, against a 2022 layer’s ten to five, which is never printed as current. One piece of history is kept out of this festival’s story, because old local announcement copy pasted it in: the tale of punkin chunkin beginning in 1986 when men in a Delaware blacksmith shop began to argue is the Delaware origin story, embedded in the 2011 and 2012 Hayesville layers, belonging to a different event in a different state. It is quarantined entire here, and the Clay County festival is never called a world championship, a sanctioned championship or the sport’s original.
For a useful comparison, see the Chowan County North Carolina Regional Fair Festival for another county festival.
What to Expect
The Launch Field
Machines take practice throws before the sessions, and visitors may view them close up between sessions. The two daily sessions in 2026 run ten to half past twelve and half past one to half past four, with a midday pause for food and wandering. Pumpkins climb and fall far down the field, and now and then one pies, or explodes in midair.
The Friday Cook-off
The weekend opens Friday evening at six on the Historic Hayesville Square, specified in the Chamber’s 2026 layer as the Historic Courthouse Beal Center Lawn. The cook-off’s published forms vary across years, but they are the same Friday contest in successive wordings, never separate contests. Taster tickets are sold first-come, first-served at the event, capped at only two hundred fifty in the Chamber’s 2026 layer. The taster-ticket price is not published in any Chamber layer fetched, and no price is invented here. A 2022 layer records categories from appetizers to beverages, with samples and a popular vote, fenced to its year.
Around the Field
Between sessions, pie-eating contests draw the loudest crowds after the machines, live entertainment plays, food and craft vendors line the field, Old Time Tractors stand on display with hay rides alongside, and the Kidzone carries the children’s side. Airplane rides appear only in the 2022 layer and older Chamber-derived copy, and a beer garden only in an early magazine account; neither is promised for the current edition.
The Teams of 2025
A 2025 magazine account gives the team layer for that year only: the Hayesville Hurlers, led by Tony Wiegold and his family, were billed reigning champions, launching up to two thousand five hundred feet in recent years with a thirty-foot-barrel cannon, beside OFC Knightmare’s human-powered trebuchets, Team Carbo’s Roman-style onager from Raleigh, and Bob LeKites’ comic-relief cameos. None of those names, distances or the champion billing is a standing result for any other year.
Planning Your Visit
Getting There and Getting Around
Visitors should plan for two destinations: Friday evening on the Historic Hayesville Square, and Saturday and Sunday at 811 Settawig Road in Brasstown. No fairground, park or venue name for the field is published in any Chamber layer, and none is supplied here; the address itself is the destination. A 2025 magazine account describes the setting as a forty-two-acre mountain ranch, kept here strictly as that account’s description. No county-line claim about the field parcel itself is asserted beyond the Chamber’s Clay County sponsorship.
Admission and Parking
The money is simple, and it is fenced to the layers that publish it. The Chamber’s 2026 page states five dollars parking, five dollars admission, and children under five free. The same ladder appears in the 2022 layer, so it is documented at both ends of the modern record, but it remains fenced to those layers and never printed as a timeless price. The Friday cook-off’s money is separate and unpublished: taster tickets are capped at two hundred fifty and sold first-come, first-served, and their price is not given anywhere fetched. Volunteer free admission, promised in the Chamber’s 2023 volunteer document, is a volunteer benefit and never a visitor offer.
What to Bring and What to Leave
The Chamber’s own page gives the field rules plainly: no pets or firearms allowed, and visitors are asked to bring a lawn chair. Sun protection, a layer for a mountain October afternoon, and sturdy shoes suit a daytime field festival on working ground. Cash is worth carrying for the five-dollar admission and five-dollar parking, because the record does not publish card terms for the field charges. No camping offer appears on the Chamber’s festival pages or in its volunteer document, and festival camping is not an event-side offer; travel layers’ campground lists are area lodging in another town, and none is presented here as a festival offer.
A Sample Saturday
Treat Saturday as the field day it is. Arrive at the Brasstown field before ten in the morning, pay the five-dollar admission and five-dollar parking, and settle a lawn chair where the machines can be seen clearly. Watch the morning session through to half past twelve, use the midday pause to walk the machines at close range and visit the vendors, then return for the afternoon session from half past one to half past four. Stay for the pie-eating contests between throws, and leave the field at five.
How It Compares
The closest comparison in the same small community is also the easiest to confuse with this festival. The John C. Campbell Folk School Fall Festival, also in Brasstown and also in October, is a separate festival on the Folk School campus, with its own dates and history, and none of its programme crosses into this article. Where the Folk School festival is a crafts campus gathering, this festival is a launch field: machines, distance, and the thrill of watching a pumpkin fly. Delaware’s championship of the same sport is a different event in a different state, with its own history and honours, and the Clay County festival is not it, has never claimed to be it, and should never be described with its billing. Judged on its own terms, the weekend is smaller, local and Chamber-run: a harvest festival, a town-square cook-off, and a field where neighbours’ machines throw pumpkins for the joy of it.
Checklist
- Choose your days: Friday in Hayesville, Saturday and Sunday in Brasstown, or the full weekend
- Arrive before the ten o’clock launch session for the best viewing
- Bring a lawn chair
- Carry cash for the five-dollar admission and five-dollar parking
- Leave pets at home: no pets are allowed on the field
- Leave firearms at home: no firearms are allowed on the field
- Arrive early on Friday for one of the two hundred fifty cook-off taster tickets
- Wear sturdy shoes and bring sun protection
- Do not plan to camp at the field: no festival camping is offered
- Check the Chamber’s current pages before travelling
Beyond the Festival Grounds
There are no festival grounds here in the fairground sense, so this section covers the two towns and the county the weekend moves through. Hayesville, the county seat, is a small mountain town whose historic square carries the Friday kickoff. Brasstown, the unincorporated community that holds the field, is quiet country between the mountains, and the drive to Settawig Road is part of the weekend’s pleasure. Clay County itself is western North Carolina mountain country: open sky for the launches, cool October air, and small towns within easy driving. The Folk School campus in Brasstown, home of the separate October festival named above, must not be confused with the Settawig Road field.
Why It Matters
The festival matters because it is local in the fullest sense: sponsored by the county’s own chamber of commerce, run on a field in an unincorporated community and a square in the county seat, with machines built and crewed by people from the area and beyond who return year after year. The Chamber’s account of thousands of visitors a year, and an early layer’s spectators from twenty-four states, suggest a reach beyond the county line, but the event stays a community harvest weekend: a cook-off judged by popular taste, tractors and children’s activities, and pumpkins flying because neighbours built machines to throw them. This one earns its place by being unlike the rest: not a fair, not a crafts market, not a championship borrowed from another state, but a launch field in Brasstown and a square full of tasters in Hayesville.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the weekend start in Hayesville and move to Brasstown?
Because the weekend has two parts: the Friday-evening cook-off on the Historic Hayesville Square in Hayesville, the county seat, and the main festival on Saturday and Sunday at 811 Settawig Road in Brasstown, since Hayesville hosts only the kickoff.
What does the five-dollar admission cover, and what costs extra?
The Chamber’s 2026 page states five dollars admission, five dollars parking, and children under five free, a ladder also documented in 2022. It is fenced to those layers and never printed as a timeless price. The Friday cook-off’s taster tickets are separate, capped at two hundred fifty, sold first-come and first-served, and their price is not published anywhere fetched. No team, vendor, Kidzone or hay-ride fee is published as admission.
Can I bring a dog, and what should I pack for a day on the field?
No. The Chamber’s own page states no pets or firearms are allowed, and visitors are asked to bring a lawn chair. Pack sun protection, a layer for a mountain October afternoon, sturdy shoes, and cash for admission and parking. No festival camping is offered at the field.
Is this the Delaware championship I may have seen on television?
No. Delaware’s championship of the same sport is a different event in a different state, and none of its facts belongs to this festival, which has never claimed championship billing of any kind.
What to Expect From the Next Clay County North Carolina Punkin Chunkin Festival
How often is the Clay County North Carolina Punkin Chunkin Festival held?
The festival is an annual October weekend event: a Friday-evening cook-off in Hayesville followed by two full festival days, Saturday and Sunday, in Brasstown. The record documents that shape for 2022 through 2026, with no gap year documented, so no unbroken run is claimed and no cancellation asserted.
When is the next Clay County North Carolina Punkin Chunkin Festival?
The most recent edition documented on the Chamber’s own pages is October 16, 17 and 18, 2026, with field days nine to five and launch sessions ten to half past twelve and half past one to half past four. A future edition’s dates are not published in the record fetched; check the Chamber’s current pages before travelling.
Will the dates change?
The festival has kept an October weekend shape across every documented year, but the exact weekend has moved within October, and the hours have varied by layer, with a ten-to-five layer in 2022 against the current nine-to-five. The pattern is stable and the dates are not fixed, so the next edition’s dates should be confirmed from the Chamber’s current pages.
The festival ends each year with machines at rest on a Brasstown field and a square in Hayesville still warm from Friday’s cook-off: a small county’s big weekend, worth the drive because nothing else in the mountains throws a pumpkin quite like it.
