A wet start to the day couldn’t stop three Goodgymers from joining the morning task to help out Friends of Grove Farm with their monthly conservation day, with Sevan braving the rain to run to the meeting point and Christos and Penny making their way with public transport.

After meeting with Mike, Anna and other members from Friends of Grove Farm, the group made their way to the area for today’s task - to clear the leftover cuttings, apparently also known as arisings, from the area after strimmers had been used to cut down the overgrown grass.

After a short safety briefing, mostly to make sure we all kept a close watch out for all the ant-mounds and giant holes in the ground, the team set to work, raking up all the leftover cuttings, dragging the chopped trees, and piling up all the waste into one corner.

With the ant-mounds making balance difficult as well as the rain continuing to come down, the team persevered with raking up and pitch-forking all the cuttings into bags to clear the area – estimated by the end to have cleared around "a-half-of-a-third" of the total area.

Hopefully all the ant-residents were not too disturbed by our activities!