The Goodgymers were not only welcomed by our 2 and 4 legged friends(cats, dogs, goats, pig, chicken), but also by the sun 🌞😎. Welcome Nick to the Goodgym Family : 1st mission today!! Anuj and Beata have previously been at the farm and joined the crew after a Park Run at Northala earlier in the morning. First visit for Penny and Kate at the farm too. Several tasks for the team with some work to be done on the potato patch that GG Ealing put in place in previous missions which Steph Ducat attended. The potato patch put the team to their knees as weeding to be done between the onions and potatoes. Compost had to be wheelbarrowed from behind the cabin to the potato patch : mission was to create a hill around the potatoes to avoid them being above the ground and becoming green. were the team creating the hills of Northala??They grow and push themselves above the soil. The team realised it was muddy and the compost had mystery mud and a lot of straw. While 4 members were looking after the potatoe patch, Anuj and Beata were playing with compost, smelly compost!!! Not Jean Paul Gauthier fragrance!They were returning compost over from one box to another. After a hard session, a group photo and a pun discussion they all went for pizza, sausage roll, cheesy twirls, crafted beer and coffee in the sun. They bumped into Harvey who came over for a lovely pizza too.

Madiha is known for occasionally recruiting special guests from all around the world to join GoodGym Ealing sessions. The visitor at today's Horsenden Farm community mission was her uncle, Afsar from Pakistan, who used to be a farmer. Afsar is doing a lot of good for his community in his home city, where he daily picks litter at local green spaces. He is a natural volunteer and loves the idea of GoodGym. His grand plan is to open a branch in his home city, GoodGym Islamabad! While visiting Ealing, he's planning on doing some good deeds for our community, so watch this space and maybe you'll see him at a few sessions!

The rest of the GoodGym team today included runners: Sevan, Kash and Anuj - the latter coming straight from Northala parkrun and quickly swapping his red parkrun top for the red GoodGym t-shirt. It was a busy morning for Anuj - he was definitely going to need a pizza after the session! 🍕

Elsa from Friends of Horsenden Hill had a couple of tasks for us today. The high-priority job was (again!) - fixing a security issue. On the way to the task, we met our friends, the goats! This time, those two troublemakers were not the escapee animals for whom we would build better barricades today. We were going to fix the pig pen instead. The piglets were finding gaps in the existing fence and breaking out! Nick was the boss of today's assignment and explained that we had to remove the big metal pieces from the barrier and then place and secure a second layer of wire fencing all around the pen.

Everyone got so enthusiastic about the job that the metal bars soon disappeared from the fence. We chose a sizeable roll of wire and started unfolding it. In the meantime, Nick placed new stakes around the pen and brought a bucket of pins to connect the wire fencing to the poles. Sounds good, right? The problem was - there was only one hammer for five GoodGymers.

Elsa managed to find a second hammer, which helped us to speed up a bit. The teammates without hammers were unfolding the fencing, holding it in place and distributing the pins to the hammer operators, who had to fiddle a bit with the nails before driving them properly into the wood. Sometimes, a pin would drop and plunge into the mud. Often, it would not go into the wood at the angle we aimed for. Anuj, who had never built a pig pen before, hammered most of the nails in (including the last one!) and was proud to acquire yet another new skill through GoodGym.

As we had too many people for the construction, Sevan was relegated to the manure transport department. He was wheelbarrowing the muck even further up than our famous potato patch, and caught the sight of Gruffalo!

The fence builders finished the piglet-proof barrier five minutes before the end of the session 👏. Hopefully, the pigs will get too big to escape through the gaps before they figure out how to beat the new security system!

It may not have been a sunny day today but at least the rain held off and so it was that GoodGym and Brompton Bicycles teamed up once again to take a new cohort of new-starters off for a bit of getting fit while doing good!

The group was of an intimate size this time round with 3 eager and willing volunteers along with AA Yianny back for another session. Adam, Dilara and Byron were ready and waiting with bikes at the ready and we were off for a scenic ride down the canal from Brompton HQ to Horsenden Farm - which we all know is the home of the famous Gruffalo....

Alongside the Gruffalo and all his companions Horsenden Farm has some lovely cows (good friends of ours by now) and those cows are going to be set to graze on a reclaimed meadow on the hill, but in order to do that the team at the farm need to clear it from the trees and brambles that have taken over. That's where we came in. Our job was chop, lop, saw, rake & gather all of the wood and bring it over to build a 'dead hedge'. The natural hedge will not only help to keep the cows safely within their pasture but also provide a perfect and ginormous bug and wildlife hotel.

And so we had a solid 90 minutes of hard work ahead of us but also a nice chance to chat with such a small and committed group.

Take a look at the photos (photogenic bunch these Brompton folk!) to see the hedge growing throughout the task.

At the end of our time we dropped off our Wellies - so glad to have those - and our gloves and cycled back the other way back to base in time for lunch.

Thank you so much Adam, Dilara and Byron for helping out, Elsa from the farm was delighted, and see you next month Brompton.

For more information about GoodGym and to get involved visit our website www.goodgym.org

Kash, Steph Ducat and Sevan navigated giant puddles, unexpected streams and overflowing rivers on their ways to and from Horsenden Farm this morning. It was so bad that for the first time, the 3 left their running shoes in the boot room and borrowed some oversized wellies! For today's task they were back in the potato field for the 3rd time after spreading manure and topping it with compost on their 2 previous visits. Today, they were creating paths around the potatoes by topping sodden sheets of cardboard with a thick coating of wood chip.

Steph and Sevan arrived first and found the organisers and regular helpers sheltering in the Hay Loft, the volunteer hub. Eventually they all decided to go back outdoors. Steph and Sevan chose their wheelbarrows, with Sevan picking a sporty model with a "go faster" striped wheel and better cornering ability. Tooled up with forks and shovels, they moved the wood chip from a pile in the car park, into wheelbarrows, up the path, through the spontaneous stream (which Sevan tried to canoe down) and onto the potato patch path. It was a real test of stamina for their arms.

While digging through the wood chip pile, Steph discovered something surprising, a chicken egg 🥚! We didn't know how it got into the middle of the pile or how long it had been there.

"We do have some free range chickens that fly around the farm" - Elsa, task owner

"The car park is quite far though and why would they lay an egg in the wood chip?" - Kash

Soon Kash arrived and path building sped up, so much so that the task was completed early and they were first in line for fresh, oven baked pizza. The trio took credit for it through their hard work. Surely the speedy wheelbarrow played more than a minor part too.

Horsenden Farm never disappoints when it comes to a good workout! This Saturday, trainer Elsa prepared a strength session for our team. Even the warm-up wasn't lightweight in any way.

I have a big container to move. It is very heavy.

Elsa knew what she was talking about when addressing GoodGymers. The steel monster at the back of the farm didn't want to move by an inch when we first approached it. We had reinforcements: one strong person who works regularly at the farm and Livio, whom we know as a Friend of Grove and Horsenden Farms but, most significantly, a LAGERCanner. Livio has brought his indispensable litter picker, which we employed to measure the doors through which the container had to travel to reach its final destination in the farmhouse (see the photos of Christos taking the measurements).

With the combination of collective muscle power, thinking ahead, the use of a trolley, lifting and shifting, we defeated the uneven surface, inclines, stairs and narrow doors. The container finally found its resting place indoors. And that was just the warm-up!

For the main set in today's session, trainer Elsa split us into teams and gave us a choice of two activities. The first training programme involved dealing with fertiliser, the second one - more focused lifting exercises. Before the rest figured out what was going on, Steph Ducat and Sevan quickly teamed up as a pair to lift more heavy objects. Those two must have smelled in the air that the other activity may be a mucky one, just like last month. By choosing weightlifting, they soon found themselves carrying very challenging loads, and suddenly, surrounded by goats in narrow passages! Two bucks blocking Sevan's and Steph's way were our old pals and escape artists we met in July.

In the meantime, the other three GoodGymers were given shovels and wheelbarrows and presented with a compost pile, a compost bin and a compost bag. None of those seemed manure-rich, so we were relieved to deal with mainly plant-based material. Livio stuck with us as a natural part of the team. Having a quartet available, Elsa's friend, who led the Vegan Composters Challenge, split us further into two teams. Christos and Sean were emptying the compost bin near the car park, while Kash and Livio attacked the pile inside the farm.

Each of the duets used different compost sources and routes but eventually unloaded their barrows at the same place: the potato patch we had enriched with manure last month. Those potatoes had really demanding nutritional requirements!

I will have to give each of you a potato bag when they grow! - Elsa

Sean was already picturing a plate of chips! That vision made him and Christos finish their composter before Livio and Kash, especially after Livio was taken out of that duo for a good while to help with other tasks. The combined new team dealt with the remaining pile and bag of compost in no time and finished the job at high noon. It was a solid session with plenty of shovelling and pushing the barrows up the hill!

With all the planned jobs done and the pizza oven firing up at midday, everyone felt a need to replenish the carbs in their bodies. We sat down to munch on pizzas and flatbreads before we split to enjoy the rest of Saturday afternoon.

We will be back at the Horsenden Farm in March! Save the date now!

How would the first Saturday of 2024 look at Horsenden Farm? Kash promised everyone a fun task, pizza and beer. When the first GoodGymers arrived, the place looked a bit quiet.

The pizza day was off because of too few customers, the beer tap place looked closed, and the task...

"It's going to be the manure" announced Madhan, emerging from the Hayloft.

What a start to the GoodGym adventure for someone like Sean, who joined today for his first-ever task! You might not expect that, but Sean was the most prepared of us. His work experience had taught him that a farm means wellies!

Today's workouts on the way to the task had a spike in the number of wheels coming to the farm!

🥇 Cycling: 3 people 🚴🏻‍♀️🚴🏿‍♂️🚴🏻‍♂️ Michelle, Sean, Luis
🥈 Running: 2 people 🏃🏽🏃‍♀️ Sevan, Kash
🥉 Walking: 1 person 🚶🏾 Madhan

Elsa from the farm showed us a heap of cow manure 🐮 that grew into monstrous proportions.

"That pile cannot get any bigger!"

Our job was to transport the precious fertiliser to a potato patch - or should I say - field! Megan, another volunteer, gave us a quick demo on how to level the manure with a rake. That became Michelle's job. She was very proactive about her new position as it was the most suitable task for someone recovering from an injury. The rest of us were loading the wheelbarrows with dung and pushing them up the hill. That was a great progressive workout 🏋🏽 as the layer of cardboard gradually disintegrated under our feet and the exposed mud became softer and more slippery, making the job harder.

Over halfway through the task, we took Elsa's offer to help ourselves to tea and biscuits at the Hayloft. We bumped into Justin who showed us the biscuit stash. There was another treat: Michelle's cake which turned out to be excellent! 🍰

Refreshed with tea and cake power, we came back to uncover the richest layers of steaming muck that Elsa thought to be the highest quality potato nutrition.

More compressed manure meant heavier barrows and an even better workout! With a few more loads of that agricultural treasure, we covered the remaining potato field area.

The pizza might have been off-limits today but the farm's oven still produced delicious flatbreads and pastries, so everyone stayed for a quite carb-heavy lunch.

We're back to Horsenden in February for more farm tasks - sign up here! Who knows what next month will bring? The mucky job may be off - although I wouldn't underestimate Horsenden cows!