Today, we joined a bigger group from Grow For Life, to take part in a charcoal party!

Wooden pallets do a sterling job of work at the walled garden: pinning things down; keeping things dry by keeping them off the ground; helping keep things dry by pinning them under tarpaulins; making makeshift tables; all sorts! We seem to spend a lot of time moving pallets around the site, and have even learned special techniques for doing so! They've become like familiar old friends in their time.

But today, for some of our friends, their time has come to an end.

Wayne has introduced us to the fire pit on site before. A huge hole in the ground, looming menacingly next to the polytunnel, like a makeshift hot-tub where maybe Wayne chillaxes with a prosecco of an evening after a heavy day's work. Today, its time was just coming into being...

Our task was basically breaking up pallets. Sawing, crowbar-ing, whatever it takes-ing to break the pallets into nice neat wood blocks which Wayne was carefully laying into the now aflame fire pit.

Charcoal making is the name of the game. By carefully controlling the combustion process, rather than burning away to nothing, our pallet wood will become charcoal. Which will then be used as part of the growing cycle.

As a reward, we finished up with tea and bacon butties (vegetarian option was also available).

Wayne will still be on site for much of the day, long after we’ve left, carefully layering up his pallet cuttings, and making heaps of charcoal. Before chillaxing into that prosecco as the sun sets over Newton-St-Loe.... 🥂

Woo-hoo!

Big up to Ruth, celebrating a 50th Goodgym good-deed today! 🥳

Welcome

And a warm welcome to GoodGym newcomer Jean.

Also welcome back to Katherine, doing a first actual job of GoodGym work after coming along to last week's slightly abortive effort at hedge laying. Glad that didn’t put you off!

Today’s group run took us to the Skyline path to help lay some hedges.

Unfortunately, owing to some communication difficulties, we didn’t get to do any hedges today.

Undaunted, we turned those frowns upside-down (evidence: see animated slide show at the top of this page), and took lots of secondary benefits from today's activity anyway. We went for a nice walk instead, and picked up [a modest quantity of] litter along the way.

Old friends

On the way home I stopped for a coffee, and bumped into erstwhile Bath GoodGymer, Rob. As a result Rob has now signed up for Tuesday’s training run, on a if-he-can-find-time basis. Might see you there.. 😀

New friends

A warm welcome to first-timers Katherine and Isabelle. It was great to have you along, and fair play to volunteering to run up that massive hill as your first ever GoodGym interaction, Isabelle 👍