Hubble, double, soil and rubble

For part II of today’s Barnet double deeds, we went along to regular GoodGym task location Clitterhouse Farm, just up the street from Millennium Green.

Between a lot of work from local people and GoodGymmers, things are taking shape there remarkably quickly. So much so in fact that it’s now spilled out into the neighbouring park, so the area around the entrance is getting worked into a play area for kiddies with plants around it. Before this can happen though the soil needs to be rejuvenated, so our task took on two flavours…

Whilst half of us turned-over the existing hard soil to break-up the surface, the rest shovelled nice new soil over the top of it. This way, the new plants will be able to get started and not give-up once their wimpy young roots reach the tough old stuff.

It wasn’t just soil mind, but also a ton of rubble that made forking through it a journey of intrigue, and hard-work. There were plenty of worms to keep us company in there, plus one of the local volunteers found an enormous cleaver stashed in the brambles. Naïvely, our lovely task-owner Patrick put his fingerprints all over the thing, so hopefully he has an alibi for the night the cleaver was last deployed.

After an hour of graft in a bitter wind we paused for an amazing cream tea and coffee laid on by the farm, the remains of Abi’s century cake (thanks Liz!) and a selection of Romanian biscuits (thanks Valentina!) All this food made us even more popular with Clitterhouse regulars Maya and Ella, the labradors that weave their way amongst people as they work.

After these refreshments our hardcore runners put in another hour (on top of the one spent at Millennium Green) before calling time and disappearing off hopefully somewhere warmer.

Thanks so much for coming out all, you deserved better weather for so much hard work!