About last night....

• We shifted 18 boxes of horse manure up and over the railway bridge and into the Hogacre Common orchard.
  
• We hauled 5 boxes of wood chip from Hogacre wild wallow into the orchard (to mix with the horse poo).
  
• We shovelled and carried a builders' bag of top soil from the Oxgrow community garden into the orchard (also to mix with the manure).
  
• We watered every bed in the community garden - the warm weather makes for thirsty plants.
  
• We dug over a couple of beds in the community garden polytunnel ready for planting, but saved the wild chamomile.
  

We also had a lovely run to the task along the river, dodging spectators and rowing coaches watching the Bumps races. On the way back we took Electric Avenue, which was new to many, recce'd next week's task location, and waved to the wild swimmers in Hinskey lake.

It was a lovely evening full of sunshine and exploration - Hogacre is a hidden corner of Oxford which many hadn't been to before.

After a COVID-related cancellation of our planned task we headed to a hastily arranged task at the OxGrow Community Garden at Hogacre Common instead.

The runners took the shady route along the river, daydreaming of icecream and wild swimming, while the rest of the gang joined us at the bottom of the infamous steps of doom. Heading up and over (thankfully not carrying a tonne of woodchip or a sofa this time!) we arrived in the garden to find Simon and the OxGrow team all set with a list of tasks for us. No surprise that with the recent hot, dry weather one of the most urgent jobs was to give the whole place a thorough watering. To-ing and fro-ing to the water system with watering cans (and sometimes using the extra troughs around the garden for which we dug channels for the water pipes on our last visit) the whole place got a good drenching, which will hopefully keep the plants happy until the weekend rain.

Meanwhile a smaller group dug over a bed in the TAP Social area of the garden. Tap Social haven't been able to do much with their corner until recently and so it has got a bit wild. Digging over one of their beds should help them get growing again sooner rather than later.

Last but definitely not least, our final group raked up the cut grass around the community garden while they waited for the scythes to be ready. You can't keep a GoodGymer from a scything task, so as soon as the scythes were prepped and sharpened they switched tools and headed out into the main common to scythe the long grass in the orchard. A veritable masterclass in scyronised scything ensued (try saying that 20 times fast), with long grass falling and pollen flying. I'm always grateful to get through a scything task with everyone's toes still intact, so well done Poldarks!

New GoodGym rule - the only acceptable outfits are GoodGym Tshirts or Britney Tshirts.

We had a very wholesome evening in the Oxgrow garden at Hogacre Common.

The community garden is in the process of installing a new irrigation system, which will make watering the garden during dry spells SO much easier. Instead of having to go to and fro from one water source wherever you are in the garden it will soon be possible to just go a few yards to one of many water troughs, making it quicker and less effort to keep the garden watered. All the troughs and pipes were laid out around the garden, but the pipes needed burying - sounds like the perfect job for a GoodGym flash mob!

We grabbed spades, gave a little thanks for the rain earlier in the day which had softened the ground nicely, and got to work digging trenches, laying the pipes in and recovering them (always one or two turf squares leftover at the end however hard you try to figure out how they came out!). We even dug our way through a mound to lay the piping, and despite calls for an axe managed to get the job done with spades, forks and muscles. We managed to get all the long sections of pipe buried, leaving just the joints to sort out. That progress will make it possible for the OxGrow team to mow and strim some of the grass from around the growing beds to keep it from taking over while they figure out the best way to bury the joints in the pipes.

With not quite enough spades to go around the rest of the team set to work weeding the raised beds . Dogging out thistles, detangling bind weed, trying to get to the bottom of dandelion roots. Along the way we enjoyed seeing the asparagus, chard and onions coming up.

Simon from Oxgrow kindly harvested chard, sorrel and a variety of herbs for all of us to take some greenery home after the task. Sorrell = suprisingly tart-tasting but great stirfried.

What do you do when your Community Garden is one side of the railway line, your delivery of woodchip is the other side of the railway line, and the only route between the two is a pedestrian bridge?
Call in GoodGym muscle of course!

Having tackled the Steps of Doom a few weeks ago helping Hogacre Wild Wallow, and being expert shovellers these days, we were confident we were up to the task. Of course, we had reckoned without the mini heatwave making every small movement a sweaty endeavour, let alone climbing up and down hundreds of steps hauling trugs of woodchip. No wheelbarrow accessible ramps here! However, we are not a team to admit defeat on such flimsy grounds, so we set to work...

It turns out that woodchip which has sat in a large heap for a few weeks creates the perfect conditions for mushrooms and a significant amount of it's own heat due to microbial action. So much so that it is not unheard of for piles to burst into flames (don't worry - it's rare!). We definitely felt that heat as we shovelled and hauled up and over to Hogacre Common (do they really need to build railway bridges so high?!). No morels or portobello mushrooms were spotted in the destruction and reconstruction of the woodchip pile; disappointing but not sure there'd have been mushroom for them amongst the other OxGrow crops anyway.

Numerous trips to and fro, spotting new graffiti masterpieces each time, efficient workers that we are we actually finished ahead of schedule. Our hard work was mulch appreciated by OxGrow and so we were rewarded with some spoils from the garden - chard, mustard leaves, chives, radishes, a couple of stalks of asparagus.

To keep you in step on our next wood chip task, try this tongue twister used by Anna and Vicky to distract from the many many stairs:

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,
and chuck as much as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

"In 1988, state wildlife conservation officer Richard Thomas of New York attempted to figure out just how much a wood a woodchuck could chuck, if a woodchuck was capable of doing so and had the inclination. Woodchucks don't actually chuck (throw) wood, of course, but, since they are a burrowing rodent, they do know well how to toss around some dirt. So Thomas took to calculating a typical size of a woodchuck burrow, which consists of three rooms and a tunnel leading to it that is roughly six inches wide and extends 25 to 30 feet. He determined that 35 square feet of soil needed to be excavated to create such a burrow. Knowing that a cubic foot of soil weighs 20 pounds, he calculated that a woodchuck can chuck 700 pounds of dirt a day. Should a woodchuck be so inclined, Thomas concluded, he could chuck about 700 pounds of wood."
More fun facts about the origin of the tongue twister here.

Well done Rachael for completing your 50th GoodGym Good Deed!

For more news from OxGrow follow them on Facebook here.

Thanks to Anna, Vicky and Matty for the puns!

Five GoodGymers joined forces with the Oxgrow volunteers for a sunny afternoon of harvesting at the Hogacre community allotment.

We got started watering the veg in the polytunnel and other crops around the allotment, then set to work harvesting potatoes from the very patch that GoodGym weeded a few weeks ago. Some of us had better luck in the small potato hunt than others as we tried to see who could find the smallest potato of them all. Eventually, after much patience and a lot of digging, Angus was happy to finally uncover a few potatoes of his own!

For the rest of the afternoon, GoodGymers helped pick the deliciously ripe raspberries, cut back the thorny brambles, and weeded out some overgrown beds. We were grateful to take some fruits and veg to enjoy at home, and hope to return again soon!

This week at GoodGym we spent a lovely summer evening helping at OxGrow’s community garden at Hogacre Common.

OxGrow aims to educate children and adults in growing food sustainably, and gives back to the community by sharing its fruits, vegetables and herbs with local food banks and other organisations. During the lockdown, OxGrow volunteers were busy supplying food to mutual aid groups and other charities.

To start off the evening, a few GoodGymers met early for a social-distance jaunt as part of Bethan’s couch-to-5K programme. Then gathered in our large socially distanced circle, we were happy to welcome a number of new runners, with some who are new to Oxford but familiar with GoodGym (welcome Annabel, Kayleigh and Laura), and others like Georgie who are new to GoodGym but familiar with Oxford.

We then headed over the railway tracks to the hidden Hogacre Common, and our bumper crop of GoodGymers got to work on a number of different tasks. Some watered the plants and seeded some spinach in the polytunnel, while others picked the perfectly ripe raspberries and blackberries. At the same time, a crew equipped with forks and gloves got to work weeding the veggie patch that had become overgrown during lockdown. We managed to get rid of many wheelbarrows’ worth of weeds, all while being careful not to uproot the potatoes!

At the end of the evening, we were invited to take home a variety of crops from the garden, including berries, chard, garlic, tomatoes, herbs and more. We even got to enjoy some veggies from the plot we helped weed last year – the fruit of our labour!