Manure smiling, the whole world smiles with you

On today’s mission at the farm, we were introduced to the area where all the, er, compost is processed.

This is - we'd never noticed it on previous trips, because it’s on the very edge of the site, away from the aesthetic and furry stuff - an area with 8 big sections of compost at various phases of its lifespan, into which we were to get down and dirty...

On arrival they'd given us all wellies to wear, which was a blessing. And so in we plunged!

Some of the sections needed turning and moving onto the top of other sections. Another was the "good stuff" into which Meyrick bravely plunged in order to bag it up so that it could be taken to one of the flower beds to do its job!

Most of the rest of us got stuck into the hard graft of forking tons of the stuff between bins and generally making the area tidier.

But it was getting a bit crowded in there, and everyone was wielding gardening forks with abandon, so I gamely took one for the team and set about the dirtiest job of all - removing some of the bindweed from around the perimeter fence, and giving it a bit of a repair job.

Towards the end of the task, Jane and Emily removed a tarpaulin from another of the sections to reveal another massive pile of the good stuff, so got to work hefting that into a fleet of wheelbarrows which the rest of us ferried to and from the planting beds.

All great fun, doing exactly the kind of “dirty” job we excel at at GoodGym. Even a spot of rain couldn’t dampen our spirits on this epic, and a bit pongy task.

Afterwards, we were all so distracted by devouring the massive pile of cakes they rewarded us with, that we forgot to cuddle any goats or piglets!