Garden rake-over

Come and help prepare a wildflower meadow they said… it sounds idyllic we thought… 😀

Four intrepid GoodGymers braved the wet weather for this group run up at Bath City Farm.

Our host Joe tooled us up, and took us down to an area on the lower end of the steep field, just above Twerton Park football ground.

An area of high brambles used to live here, but has recently been cut back. As part of an ongoing schedule of work to prep the site for the wildflowers, our job was to rake up the bramble cuttings. Which it turns out it’s actually a much harder job than it looks. Especially since once you’ve raked it up, what’s left is fairly bare mud which in this rain, on that slope, becomes really slippery to walk on.

Joe popped off to get some extra tools for the second part of the task - a drag bag and one of our old favourites - a mattock 😍

Having raked the dead brambles into piles, an even muddier, slippier, exhausting task involved hauling them onto the drag bag and dragging said bag up to the top of the field to get the cuttings out of the way.

A few of the hardier brambles were still attached to the ground - hence the mattock.

All in all this was one of the toughest GoodGym tasks any of us has undertaken. We didn’t even get to cuddle any baby goats this time!!

I’m sure the wildflower meadow will look lovely in due course though… 🤗