Happoo New Year! What's a better way to start a new chapter than to spend a chilly, but sunny morning at an urban farm, surrounded by nature and good company?

That's how our new joiners, David and Jemma, decided to begin their GoodGym adventure. Welcome and well done for showing up today!

The Horsenden session is a great reason to add some exercise to the day. Iram cycled, Sevan and Kash ran, and Danny and Kat walked a whopping 3 hours from the neighbouring borough to get to Horsenden Farm, setting off well before the sun was up. That's a true GoodGym-style dedication, rewarded by some fantastic nature sights and a wonderful sunrise along the way!

A total of ten GoodGymers, who made it to the session, were assigned two jobs by a Friend of Horsenden Farm, Nick, and they decided to split into teams.

Team Hay (or High?) included the tallest people, working at height. David, Danny and Ash were tasked with taking bunches of dried tree hay off hooks and piling them at the ground level to make them accessible for shorter farm volunteers.

Team Sandwich: Iram, Steph Ducat, Jemma, Thaiza, Kash, Kat and Sevan were assigned the job of making two giant sandwiches. They were first transporting green waste onto two piles of manure, creating a sort of "lettuce" layer, which would then be topped by more manure. The vision resembled a sandwich structure - and you know what kind of sandwich I'm talking about! 💩

In an attempt to prevent their fingers from freezing, the GoodGymers kept shovelling and wheelbarrowing until the green heap was gone. Ash, Danny and David, having completed their task, joined the unit just when it was going to be promoted from dealing with green waste to brown waste. A huge pile of brown matter was more than enough to complete the sandwiches and compress the veg waste into compost. But what to do with the rest of the poo heap? The short answer: move it to the poo mountain!

GoodGymers love a challenge, so without mucking about, and got right into a vigorous race with barrows to the top of the mountain. The ice on the ground was slippery, and despite running with wheelbarrows was off the table, a couple of people still slipped. Luckily, the falls didn't result in any bruises - merely with a little bit of brownness on clothes!

Digging the cow muck uncovered a real metropolis of invertebrates living in rather poo conditions. But their plight got even worse when the robins found out that the lunch was just served! Looking at the birds savouring fresh worms, the GoodGymers started feeling a bit peckish too, so they finished the task rapidly (but diligently!) and rushed to position themselves in the queue for the pizza, coffee and beer. As volunteers, they were allowed to use the indoor space at the Hayloft for their lunch - a real treat after two hours of work in the chilly weather!

If you'd like to join us next month, sign up now for the February session at Horsenden Farm. We are hoping to see you there!

Kat, Danny, Harvey, and Iram showed up in the quiet days between Christmas and New Year to keep the South Ealing Food Cupboard running smoothly.

In true seasonal style, Santa clearly needed to review his logistics - the second delivery van arrived first, and the first turned up later! Luckily both when GoodGymers were present! Despite the topsy-turvy timings, the team got straight to work. Danny, Harvey and Kat handled the heavy lifting, unloading the van and hauling crate after crate to the door while Irām helped with sorting and organisation.

The festive feast included mountains of carrots, pumpkins, turnips, cauliflower, pigs in blankets pizza, herbs, HelloFresh bags and loads of oranges. The citrus fruit needed careful sorting as many weren’t fit for stocking distribution. It was a bumper haul and most of the unpacking was impressively wrapped up within the hour!

Today's session for HANGOT had a surprisingly good start. There were 10 GoodGymers registered for the task, which was amazing in itself, including Will who made this is first GoodGym session. Welcome 👋🥳! Everyone also made it to HANGOT's secret undercover base on time and without getting lost. Amazing!

Once assembled, they walked to BlackBerry Corner, one of HANGOT's earliest orchards, with 20 apple trees and a long history of brambles, hence the name. As it was coming to the end of the growing season - for fruit and weeds - it was time to tidy up the orchard. Today's priorities were to:

1. Clear a ring around each apple tree to be free of weeds
2. Remove brambles and nettles from the paths
3. For completeness, cut down the open spaces too

The goal was to starve the ground of nutrients year after year to stunt and then eventually stop the weeds from growing back.

Work was divided up between the team with everyone grabbing a tool for their task. Shears, rakes, wheelbarrows, a pitchfork and a slasher were passed around. Working together, they made quick work of the most important jobs around the paths and trees.

At the same time, some of HANGOT's team were scything the open spaces, leaving lots to be raked up and moved to the distant compost heap. Will did a great job of raking throughout the task, which gave him a solid workout at his first session. A few others felt the fatigue in their muscles too by the end from chopping and slashing.

HANGOT were incredibly grateful that the huge GoodGym turnout had helped them complete all of the planned work. Their compost heap had also gone from zero to humongous, which will be really useful next year. There was even time for some to see their first quince tree fruiting and taking a chance on eating what they'd hand picked.