A final (for this season) evening at Oxford Mutual Aid food bank doing our flash mob cleaning.

Since the autumn we've worked our way around every inch of the food bank cleaning areas which rarely get any attention. We've moved stock, crates, and shelving. Swept, bleached, mopped, and then figured out the giant tetris of how to put it all back. We've cleaned the kitchen monthly, including taking out kilos of food waste and scrubbing the fridges, walls and floors. We've restacked storage, loaded deliveries, packed Christmas gifts, and cleaned dozens of delivery crates (prising them apart when necessary!).

It's taken 5 months, but WE DID IT!

Donning buoyancy aids and a can(oe)-do attitude, a group of GoodGymmers teamed up with Falcon Boat Club to undertake a river litter pick along the Cherwell and Thames as part of OxClean's 2023 Spring Clean.

Over the last several autumns we have planted lots of daffodil bulbs around the streets of Marston. St David's Day seemed like a great time to go and check out how they're getting on and litter pick while we're at it. The cold, dry winter meant that not many flowers were in bloom yet, but we could see that there's been a good success rate in them coming up and budding, even in areas where we weren't convinced they'd be able to survive, so flowers will only be a week or so away.

Food items were definitely the theme of this litter pick - we could have made ourselves a 3 course meal of fortune cookie, discarded burger and half a chocolate bar plus half a rich tea biscuit to finish. Maybe not exactly recommended! Lots of cigarette and vape packets too. Overall not one of the grubbier litter picks we've done, but 4 sacks of grot collected, and some definite sogns of spring coming.

Our February food bank flash mob tackled the cleaning of the Eastern and Northern sides of the hall. As always, lots of crates full of stock needed to be unstacked and moved elsewhere in the space so that the floors and walls could be unveiled for cleaning. Duly relocated, the areas were swept and mopped, then the fun of trying to restack piles of crates in the same configuration as they came out began. Thanks to 'before' photos we were largely successful this time! The Northern end of the hall proved to be the grottiest spot, with lots of dust, spilt items and general muck to clean up.

While the majority of the GoodGymers toiled away on the moving-cleaning-restacking in the main hall, a breakaway crew sorted fresh produce in the kitchen, swept and cleaned the floors and walls, took out food waste, cleaned the fridges, and left the whole place gleaming.

Last but definitely not least, Anja and Steve cleaned dozens of food crates and stacked them back in the regular piles for reuse.

The amount 19 GoodGymers can achieve in an hour is truly impressive!

Our Saturday challenge was to help maintain and expand a newly established community orchard at Risinghurst Allotments. Tasks included unearthing weed membrane and removing it from an area where trees are going to be planted next, filling in the worst of the lumps and bumps in the ground so that it was closer to level, pulling up the grass that had got established (techinque note - stick the fork in and twirl it like with spaghetti) , and most importantly rehoming 2 hibernating toads which we found while doing all those jobs. Toadally kermitted to amphibian rescue.

As toad by Goodgym

We also mulched fruit tree saplings with woodchip, tried to keep Cassie the pup entertained, unearthed a multitude of unusual objects (buried tennis ball, rubber pig, barbed wire), and enjoyed tea and flapjacks supplied by our hosts.

It was toadally worth venturing beyond the ring road for a morning of shovelling, digging and munching.

Next up in Risinghurst - Hop on over for frog rescue in the spring. We've been asked to help on Frog Patrol to stop randy frogs getting squashed on the ring road. Times and Dates tbc, so watch this space!