GoodGym members from Tower Hamlets, Southwark and Redbridge cycled along from their areas to the Bethnal Green foodbank to help out this December day between Christmas and New Year.

Beth, Chris, Jay and Simon joined a team of regular volunteers as we packed up food parcels for clients to collect the following day.

Holiday tunes were playing on the radio while well-needed food and drinks were flying off the shelves along with festive treats donated by local people.

GoodGym-ers wanting to help give out the food parcels can sign up for Wednesday's distribution session (29 December 13:30-19:30 https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/foodbank-distribution-session-a1fa0626-93a9-4fcb-a376-749d85d599ca)

... Or next week's packing session (4 January 12:00-15:30-ish https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/foodbank-packing-session-dfc5cc57-dc4b-4193-a1d9-b5875ac953ad)

... and next week's distribution session (5 January 13:30-19:30 https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/foodbank-distribution-session-0040f09f-18a7-4df1-8bf3-d220e0e28438)

Thank you from the Food bank team!

It was a victorious day!

GoodGymers were out in full force on the Big Half race and being slightly concerned about the road blocks, Harry showed up 15 minutes beforehand. I would know I was there 20 minutes before 😂😜

Yet, both Chris and first-time GoodGymer, Lauren weren't far behind as these eager beavers were down for a fun time at the farm! 👨‍🌾👩‍🌾🚜

Bex is still off on sick leave, so we were tended to by Rachel, who recognised Chris and Harry from last week as they were back for round 2. But round 2 of what?

Round 2 of digging out the second diseased Cherry tree. We had to take out the main tree (with the stump and all (or almost all) its roots). Taking out a tree isn't as easy as it sounds, we were using shovels, forks and even had to get out some sharp loppers to cut the roots that were impeding our digging spots. Yet, clever thinking by Harry to push the tree back and forth (it was pretty loose at this stage) to finally bring out the main part of the tree out of the soil. Like a bunch of grave diggers, we spent the next few minutes digging out the remains (to be clear, it was the roots of the tree...no bones were dug up). Now, the farm has a space for berry bushes to be grown.

Rachel was so impressed 🤣 that she gave us another task. We had to clear the pathway of all the overgrown neetles and weeds, but we had such an efficient system that we still had 40 minutes left on the clock.

By this time, Rachel just had to give us a tour of the farm. We spent a decent amount of cuddle time with the 🐑s, glanced at the 🐴, didn't even notice the 🐔, had a rough encounter with the male 🐐, watched the male 🐷 (Rupert) eat 🍎🍏s and finally, spent a nervy time with two baby 🐄 who were interested in getting bottle fed but ended up being disappointed as we had none.

The final final task was to clean the 🐐 courtyard and again, we had a system to sweep their 💩 to a centralised spot before filling the barrow.

All in all, a great session at the Farm. Yet, it usually is when there's cuddle time with any of the farm animals ☺️ awesome job to Chris, Harry and Lauren! Hopefully, you'd enjoyed your first GoodGym mission Lauren and I hope to see you on another one soon!

Next Surrey Docks Farm mission will be mid-September, so look out for those places and book early, so that you're not disappointed. 👍