The Cherwell Collective run a food larder, Climatarian Kitchen and food growing collective (Harvest at Home). Based in Kidlington, they support people all over Cherwell District. This time of year they are deep into harvest, saving people's spare fruit and veggies and distributing them at the larder, or cooking them up into delicious meals to serve up at the Climatarian Kitchen.

Last night a couple of homeowners in Lower Heyford had promised the fruit from their apple trees to the larder, and so GoodGym took a short road trip out of Oxford to help with the gleaning.

Ladders, tarpaulins, and big sticks in hand we shook down, picked, and collected up 6 crates of apples from 2 gardens in Lower Heyford. Django the dog was semi-helpful at searching and retrieving falling apples (great at finding, not so great at giving back!), and we discovered heads for heights and tree climbing/precarious balancing skills we never knew we had.

Our harvest will get cooked up and given away, supporting people struggling with the cost of living and saving good food from going to waste.

Last night a group of intrepid GoodGymers set off on an expedition to the frozen North of Oxfordshire desperately seeking their fortune in apples. Scrumping poles, litter picks and tarpaulins at the ready, they were a veritable trail of Dick Whittingtons.

Alighting in Lower Heyford to a warm welcome from the hardy locals they set to work filling their boots (crates) with apples from the heavily laden trees. With plenty to go around competition was not fierce, and team work prevailed between the ground crews and climbers. Various iterations of 'shake the branches of the tree and catch the apples in a tarpaulin' yielded 580kg of apples in a mixture of cookers and eaters. In a win for the Health and Safety executive (but a loss for science?) no-one got hit on the head by a falling apple Newton-style. Shona the unicorn-esque horse seemed happy to have company for the evening, and while the possibility of a ladder-based disaster was ever-present it never actually materialised.

The Cherwell Collective will be giving half of the apple haul to the Oxford Food Hub for distribution to various local food banks and larders. Some of the rest of the apple harvest will be turned into chutney by the Wonky Food Company and sold to raise funds for Cherwell Larder. A load of the remaining apples will be cooked up into delicious crumble to serve in the Cherwell Collective's Climatarian Kitchen, which is a food surplus cafe operating on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at Exeter Hall, Kidlington. They also provide culinary courses, meal kits, and flexible recipes to help the community reduce food waste and promote well being. They feed between 150 and 300 people per week. Finally, the Cherwell Larder will take the rest of the apples to distribute to users of the larder. The Larder operates very similarly to a food bank, providing food and other essentials to the community.

Noted for future apple picking: hard hats or bike helmets would be useful apple picking kit!

Thanks for the title pun Henry!

Last night we finally got an opportunity to complete our rescheduled 3rd birthday task!

The storms stopped us making it to the allotment site when we had planned in February, but you can't keep a team of GoodGymers away too long.

Since we had time to kill at the start of the task due to some truly awful traffic holding up GoodGymers and the van full of tools we had a bit of fun during the register with a silly question/ice breaker. So, this week's conversation starter for 10: What's your 2nd favourite flavour of soup? Thanks to Katie's student for that one!

Harvest at Home has community growing initiatives across Oxfordshire, and the latest site at South Ward Allotments is destined to be an experimental growing space. Here they will show people how to grow their own food and also experiment with crops which might be suitable for growing in the weather conditions we can expect in 5, 10 and 15 years into the future. It pays to be prepared for the effects of climate change.

Despite our efforts last year, and lots of hard work since then by the Cherwell Collective/Harvest at Home team, there's still plenty to do to get the plot organised. We jumped to work unloading the van of tools and raised beds then got stuck into the list of jobs. We set the raised beds up in place, shoveled the manure pile to fill the beds and moved large quantities of the rest of it over to the compost bays for storage/further rotting down (going home from GoodGym smelling of manure is a new experience!), Henry did some very thorough strimming work ridding the plot of nettles and long grass, and we also made good in roads into the tangle of bramble - lopping away at brambles which could win prizes for size. We even uncovered and rehomed a sloworm in the manure pile; particularly interesting since they'd come up in conversation on our run over to the task.

Welcome to GoodGym Sophie - hope you enjoyed your first GoodGym experience :-)

Thanks for leading us out of the allotments the scenic route Sam!

3 GoodGymers ventured outside the ring road to help the Cherwell Collective at their ‘Allotment Do Day’.

The allotment at Hazel Walk is used to grow food for the larder and as a space to teach people how to grow their own food. Having found slow worms on the site the back corner will be kept wild as a habitat for them.

Our trio spent a couple of hours digging out turf and bramble roots to create a path to the shed at the back of the allotment. A sticky, clay-y task, so we all went home streaked with mud having had a very decent arm workout!

Harvest@Home have a new allotment plot in South Oxford to use both to grow food for Cherwell Larder and to teach larder users how to grow their own fresh produce. The snag in the plan is that the plot has been unused for years and so the grass and brambles have now reached head height. Our challenge was to tame the wilderness! 17 GoodGymers, a car load of tools, and 1.5 hours; sounds doable.

We cut paths through the long grass to access the shed and swing/climbing frame, laid down weed-suppressing tarpaulins, unearthed glass and loads of junk hidden away all over the plot. Determined teams dismantled wire fencing which had become embedded in the soil and enmeshed in the long grass (a very difficult task!), while others unearthed the compost heap and weeded and lopped away, rediscovering the plot sign in the process.

The GoodGym flash mob treatment resulted in significant transformation of the allotment plot, which was very satisfying and made the hayfever snuffles just about bearable.

The next steps will be clearing more of the long grass (a strimmer may be required), laying cardboard down for further weed suppression, and getting started on some no-dig gardening.

Well done to Hattie on doing your 10th Good Deed - rather warmer and sunnier than your first one!

Harvest@Home (part of the Cherwell Collective) aims to provide the equipment and skills necessary for people to plant, care for, and harvest their very own produce at home. They are establishing several allotments both for teaching/community growing and to grow fresh produce for the Cherwell Larder.

Today we were working at one of the Harvest at Home growing spaces in North Kidlington. The plot is in a lovely meadow, with pigs foraging away in the far corner and rescue horses in the next field over. They have a no-dig gardening spot established (with the shed in place which we dismantled for transporting earlier in the year!), and our task was to plant up as many potatoes and onions as possible.

Mike took on the task of digging out the nettles around the water trough, and is probably going home with tingling hands as his gloves were no match for the determined stingers. Rachael, Ben and our new pal Wendy (a Cherwell Collective volunteer) kitted themselves up with egg trays - the perfect tool for onion planting - and got started on planting hundreds of onions and potatoes. Never one to pass up some wheelbarrow action I flitted between potato planting and transporting compost.

A couple of hours work made good in-roads in the planting, and we think we all avoided sunburn too.

Sunday fun in the sun.