On a mild evening we gathered for our first after-dark task session on the farm. We tackled a laurel of jobs—moving logs, cutting back dense laurel growth, clearing a goose enclosure by rolling up the electric fence and raking up the straw. We tore cardboard for compost and trimmed the hedge! It was a productive and satisfying evening, made even more special by welcoming a new member, Suzanne, to the team. We’re delighted she joined us and hope she had a great time getting stuck in with the GG team!

We are like a well oiled machine when it comes to cleaning vehicles now! Abby set to work instructing the team on the perfect steps for required for cleaning. Is it just water then water and soap or water and soap and then just water?! I don’t know but I know you need to shimmy shammy to get it sparkling! Well done team - I think that might be a record of 5 vehicles cleaned inside and out in one hour. You can all have a winter break from car washing now…probably!

We returned to the farm for a consecutive week of muck spreading! We struck gold this week, during golden hour, managing to get to the good stuff early on to shift many wheelbarrows to the vegetable patch. Helen, Sarah and Ellie worked on loading up the barrows while Wilson and Chris did the emptying and spreading. Wilson was on wheelbarrow returning duties to keep an eye on our work and insisted we could managed another two wheelbarrows in the last 7 minutes. What a task master!

We helped FoSoC move the grass cut into compost - managing a massive 13 tonne-bags!

We helped Thomas from Southampton City Farm move a bunch of materials from B&Q out of the parking lot - they'll be soon used to build a chicken coop on the farm grounds. We did this in a totally not competitive way.

We were also by no means influenced by the promise of feeding the animals and running with ponies if we finished early.

Having finished the task in about 30 minutes, we spent the rest of the time playing with the animals and helping the farm put them to sleep. We got to run through the school's fields with Salt & Pepper, the ponies, which were surprisingly quick.