I was back at City Harvest this Thursday and a party was going on upstairs. It was an inauguration party for the new floor which was constructed end of last year.

I joined a team of 4 and navigating the warehouse was a bit challenging as there were so many pallets stuffed with fruits and groceries. So we decided to split the roles between us. I was in charge of separating the crates. 1 person was in charge of layering the crate with a paper. The other two were filling the crates with fruits. We were doing it like a clockwork for the next 2 hours.

I was so busy that I forgot to take photos. So the report goes with a stock image

It's been 3 months since I last visited City Harvest. Went inside the warehouse with freezing fingers. Mizan assigned me on a vegatable stacking mission.

I put on a City Harvest jacket as I couldn't bear the cold. I was glad that today's task was not inside the Fridge.

Ruby was playing some banger classics throughout the evening. EveryBody - Back street boys, What is Love to name a few

I joined another volunteer, Ewa, and we were making crates of potatoes and beetroots. I was filling the crates with beetroots and Ewa was topping it up with potatoes. We ran out of beetroots after making 40 crates. So we filled the remaining with jacked potatoes. Before moving on to the grocery section, we took a bite-sized challenge of loading a few crates with organic juices.

When we went to the grocery section, it was full of condiments and spices. Cinnamon sticks, Chicken tikka masala, hot sauce, cheese sauce, pickles etc. We tried our best to mix and match the condiments with tinned fruits.

Never gonna give you up started playing around 7:55pm and Mizan asked to wrap us up.

and we all left the warehouse by 8pm.

I've noticed that City Harvest had a slot available for the evening shift today and booked it. It's been a while since I've been to City Harvest and noticed that it looked different as there is construction work going on inside the warehouse. So they've restructured certain areas.

Today's all about lettuce. We filled crate after crate with lettuce till 7:45 p.m. And in the last 15 minutes, we seperated the crates so that it will help the morning shift tomorrow

No, not me in my 🎽 and 🩳. City Harvest had a lot of Nakd bars, so I and the 2 other volunteers on tonight were asked to fill the snack crate with roughly 40% Nakd bars.

This was my first time at City Harvest in 3 and a half years, since coming with GoodGym on a Community Mission in January 2020. It looked different to what I remembered and I found out that was because they'd moved to a larger unit in that time.

I had an induction, showing me around the different areas and explaining how they operate. Then I went straight into packing crates in the snack aisle. It felt pretty unhealthy as crisps, biscuits and protein bars were piled high onto a pallet. It was good to know that somewhere else, there were stacks of fruit and veg too that had already been portioned out.

After filling 3 pallets with mostly Nakd bars, I and the other volunteers were asked to sort through 8 boxes of ginger, remove anything that'd perished and move the rest into crates. With that done, we were told by the shift manager that bank holiday weekends were usually quiet and after just over an hour, we headed home.

Today's task at City Harvest involved snacking. After having a piece of chocolate from the box which got opened when putting them in crates, I joined the trio who were already making mixed snack crates.

We had quite a lot of Deliciously Ella bars. So we had to work around that in making mixed snacks. A few bags of doritos and crisps filled the boxes, so we had to sneak the protein bars in the gaps.

After working for 80 minutes to make 80 crates of mixed snacks, we ran out of crates. So we had to finish the shift earlier than expected.

It's a quiet evening in City Harvest. I was checking my email if I received any cancellations of the evening shift, as it had happened before.

Only 4 volunteers were there including me. Usually, it will be around 8-10. Mizan, the warehouse manager, assigned me and Gareth, a volunteer whom I had paired with before, to do some vegetable insertions. The task was to insert a few aubergines into the existing tray filled with kale and other green vegetables.

So we took out trays one by one and filled them with aubergines and loaded them back again. Once the aubergines are filled, we moved to our next task. Making pallets of drinks. We made 35 crates of drinks this evening. The drinks had quite a mix today. Coke Zero, Coke no caffeine, Coke berry flavour, Pepsi max, sprite zero, some energy drinks I haven't seen before, iced tea, and water bottles of different sizes.

There was one can of Rhubarb+squeezed apple, which Gareth suggested to me to have a taste. So I took it home. After having two sips my tongue decided not to have any more of that.

The 12-4 pm shift volunteers did pretty good work that the evening shift was not needed - Jason

So the 6-8 pm shift ended at 7 pm and we all left early.