After our false start last week with a cancelled attempt it was a joy to see a sunny Saturday morning, Mikey, Nathan and Darren arranged to meet up at Global Gardens. There was already a community mission going on there and Charlotte was celebrating her 50th good deed, something that we just couldn't ignore. After congratulations had been made and we had said our hellos we set off to our mission at StarGarAllot community garden a good 5km away.

Stargarallot Community Garden was created in 2018 by local residents as a community garden network covering the STAR area of Cardiff. Since we last visited back in January, they have been busy growing and distributing healthy vegetables to Oasis and Tremorfa community pantry.

Recently they have been awarded a Keep Wales Tidy Food Growing Development Package and today our job was to help to clear the ground ready for a new accessible path.

With all of this in mind we ran at light speed to get to them.

Upon arrival we were greeted by the wonderful Camilla, she showed us some of the changes since we were last there, this included the new fancy hand washing station. So all geared up, with tools in newly washed hands, we set to work.

After several wheelbarrows full, lots of forking, digging and laughing, we could see the start of a pathway. After checking in with Camilla and another of the volunteers, who had now arrived with coffee and protein bars, we started on the next phase. We now had to level off some land next to the greenhouses and lay three new slabs so that we could move the liquid fertiliser into a more accessible spot.

It's safe to say that we were very careful when it came to moving the fertiliser, no-one fancied running home covered in any of it!

After a good couple of hours, we were finished, and by now plenty of volunteers had turned up for their day of learning about apple juicing and testing their knowledge about apples. After a quick breather, and an apple muffin, we said our goodbyes as they thanked us for our time.

Well Done All

Seven hardy GoodGymmers gathered for our community mission in the typhoon conditions of Cardiff this lunchtime. We'd been invited to the StarGarAllot - a fantastic community project. As this was our first time at the project, we were met by our task contact who showed us the way, having travelled to the allotment by bike.

Camilla introduced us to the other volunteers and explained that this was a community project aimed at addressing food poverty. The aspiration was that the group would develop skills and capability to grow fresh produce and that the allotment would be for the community. The volunteers had been successful in securing funding for a polytunnel but needed a patch of land dug, levelled and primed ready for the tunnel to be built.

The kind volunteers spotted the shivering GoodGymmers and provided us with a warming cuppa before we got started. Mikey and Ted got on with the forking to break down the soil whilst the rest of us started double digging - apparently this is a technique to dig out earth in a big trench and move it to the other end of the patch, refilling it with other freshly dug earth.

Knee deep in glorious mud, the team made steady progress before a reinforcement arrived in the form of Pete 'Wales' Gillibrand who provided moral support and encouragement (and a little bit of digging) to help us finish the task! We'd cleared a significant patch of ground and whilst there was still more to do, we agreed that it was time to call it a day. We'll look forward to helping the project at a future community mission.

We worked with the community volunteers to clean the equipment and took a few quick photos to show the good progress we'd made before heading off for much deserved and very welcome hot showers. Well done team - a terrific end to a GoodGym packed weekend.