The twelfth and final month of 2025 brought a dozen GoodGymers to the Horsenden Farm volunteering day. Were we surprised by such a turnout in December? Not at all! The farm continues to attract crowds of GoodGymers from Ealing and other areas. Today’s visitors were: the regular guest from Hounslow, Maxime, and a former Ealing team member, now based in Tower Hamlets, Maria. It was great to see both of them!

The task was not only an occasion for returns, but also for new beginnings. We welcomed Raji, who already knew Horsenden’s pizza and craft beer secrets, but was keen to get stuck into various volunteering opportunities, and farm work sounded pretty exciting.

Steph Ducat, Iram and Victoria were the lucky (or shall I say mucky?) ones to get the quintessential farm experience, with its animalistic element. They got to play with Nala the dog and with cow poo. Transporting barrows and barrows of manure out of the barn, they clocked in plenty of steps and built an impressive pile of... you know what!

Meanwhile, the less dirty of the dozen played explorers in an overgrown part of Horsenden Hill. Their mission: locate a ditch, clear the ditch, build a dead hedge. Simple, right? With such a big team - yes! On the forefront, several brave ones: Ash, Freya and Raji, led the expedition, and raced each other to get to the ditch. The first timer, Raji, impressed everyone by being the first one to reach the trench. Maxime and Kash widened the paths made by the pioneers, and Afshin vigorously raked the cuttings to gather material for the dead hedge.

The ditch turned out to be longer than expected, so Penny and Sevan launched two more expeditions to attack the ditch from the other side. Both reached the destination and joined forces with those already in the trenches. Result? All unwanted vegetation has been removed from the ditch and used for constructing the dead hedge. Clearing the space will help improve the drainage at one of the trails at Horsenden Hill - when we worked on that path on a very rainy day in the past, it looked like a river!

We finished the session, traditionally, with the wood-fired pizza, and were proud to support Horsenden Loaf, which otherwise didn’t get many customers in the morning. We hoped the sales would pick up in the afternoon, and now hope that the pizza oven will be on in January. Horsenden will be one of the first sessions in 2026, so if we want to include more GoodGymming in your New Year’s resolutions, sign up now!