The Plastic Project - Part 1

Photos by Jenny Simmons Last night, after a 1.7k warm up run, we reached Spitalfields City Farm and started pulling at buried plastic sheeting at the edge of a large paddock. The farm has several patches of land which have this plastic sheeting underneath a thin layer of soil - brilliant for stopping weeds coming through. However, the farm now want grass to grow so that they can graze animals on the land, which means the plastic sheeting needs to be removed.  A GoodGym team cleared the sheeting from a small field back in August, and now this much larger paddock is getting the same treatment. Different techniques emerged for the various stages of the task.  Teams lined up along the length of the sheeting and on the command of "Roll!" everyone rolled the edge of the sheet to gain grip, then several rounds of "one, two, THREE" followed by perfectly unified tugs.  As the plastic came up, the soil on top began to pile up and become too heavy, so a phase of shovelling the soil was next.  Different teams attacked problems of long roots with various tools; some people used scissors to put strategic cuts into the matting so it could be torn by others, and those with rakes, spades and shovels levelled the land. The runners split into two groups for the return journey.  Jessie Barnard led a delightful route north to the canal and back round to the Arch Gallery, while the others took a more direct route back and broke the jog for a sprint session of alternate 20 second sprints and 10 secs of rest.  Both groups arrived back at the same time. In 30 mins we managed to remove two strips of the plastic and level the soil.  We'll be back there next week aiming to beat this record.