Just because Halloween is over, it doesn't mean that old jack o'lantern is useless.

You can make excellent use of it this Saturday at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds. Saturday is ElderHelp of North Idaho's inaugural "Punkin' Chunkin'" event and it is free for all ages.

Punkin' Chunkin' is a competition that brings inventors together to demonstrate their various styles of launching pumpkins through the air for distance, for accuracy, or both. ElderHelp plans to make this an annual event.

Jerry Boggs, executive officer of ElderHelp North Idaho, says this event has two purposes.

"Each year ElderHelp assists hundreds of our quietly suffering senior citizens by doing weatherization, building wheelchair ramps, supplying firewood or food," he said. "We wanted a fun, unusual event that would thank and inform the public about our work while giving them an opportunity to enjoy a different kind of fun."

The event starts at noon. Everyone is urged to bring a pumpkin to destroy by flinging it with the trebuchet, launching it from a pumpkin-sized slingshot, using it for a bowling ball or simply smashing it Gallagher style with a wooden mallet.

Boggs says the colder weather and leftover Halloween pumpkins make this a perfect time to bring families out for a couple of hours to have some, "Good, messy fun."