The Early May Bank Holiday weekend sounds like a time when everyone wants to get away to enjoy a break, right? Wrong! A revolutionary team of 12 GoodGymers descended on Horsenden Farm, redefining Italian cuisine and the rules of landscaping.

Such impressive numbers guaranteed at least a double task, so the team split into two. Sevan, Richard, Thaiza, Amy, Maxime and Afshin went up Horsenden Hill to marvel at the views while dealing with treacherous spikes, while Penny, Danny, Kat, Steph Ducat, Augustin and Kash headed down to the car park to make a very special lasagne.

The first team continued the task started last month at the top of the hill. The goal was to remove as much prickly hawthorn as possible to make space for the Horsenden cows to graze and enrich the ecosystem with their wonderful cow pies - a buffet for countless insects, fungi, and bacteria, and a source of nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium for plants to grow.

With thick gloves and loppers, the six GoodGymers finished off the leftover hawthorn from April and moved on to the next patch, where the newest addition to the team, Amy, spotted a memorial sign and cut through the spiky plants, determined to find out what was written on it. What a start! Amy met us last month at another outdoor task, so we knew she'd fall in love with losing herself in Horsenden's nature. Welcome, Amy!

The hilltop team destroyed the second hawthorn patch in no time and moved on to make a start at the third one, which they had to leave unfinished. Throwing the tangled, spiky cuttings over the fence and pushing them down was not a quick and easy job as one might think. The group made great progress, with some hawthorn still left behind for the next volunteer group.

The second team was a team of cooks. As you can imagine, things can get tricky when you get too many of them. To add to the complexity of the intricate lasagne recipe we had to follow, we were boosted by two additional cooks (other Horsenden volunteers). Luckily, Elsa, our task owner and chef, joined the group to masterfully coordinate the execution of her staple recipe:

Compost Lasagne

(Serves: 1 happy ecosystem)

Prep time: As long as it takes to fill a wheelbarrow
Cook time: A few months (slow food at its finest)

Ingredients

• 4 parts “green waste” 🌿 (plant trimmings + signature “lasagne sh*ts” a.k.a. manure)
• 6 parts woodchip 🪵
• A willing team of GoodGymers

Equipment

• Pitchfork 🍴
• Shovel 🥄
• Wheelbarrow 🛒

Method

1. Lay down a generous base of lasagne sh*ts. This is your rich foundation.
2. Sprinkle a layer of plant waste over the top. Think of it as your herby middle layer.
3. Cover with a thick layer of woodchip to seal everything in and keep things nicely balanced.
4. Drizzle a light splash of compost béchamel (questionable brown liquid) over the layer.
5. Keep layering: manure, greens, woodchip, 2 to 3 times, or until your compost lasagne reaches impressive heights.
6. Let it rest - leave your masterpiece to slowly “cook” down into beautiful compost.

Bon appétit (for the soil)! 🌍

Chef’s tip

The secret ingredient is teamwork and not taking yourself too seriously.

After assembling three impressive lasagne, we left nature to do the rest of the cooking. We then all headed for a well-deserved team lunch, which offered an equally unconventional take on Italian cuisine: pizza with a pickle and egg!

If you think that sounds like a fun thing to do on a Saturday morning, join us next month at Horsenden Farm!

Was it the whopping nine GoodGymers who brought the sun to Grove Farm on April Saturday morning? Or was it the other way around? The long-distance walkers, Danny and Kat, covered 13km to get to their monthly Ealing session. Their early morning walk was a crisp and chilly one - quite a contrast to the scorching, sunny afternoon the same day! Sevan and Kash ran their usual hilly 7.5km run, which never gets easy if you do it only once a month! Thaiza was back to one of her favourite environmental tasks, all bright and clad in GoodGym red, apart from her yellow wellies - proof that sensible GoodGymers who show up prepared with appropriate footwear exist! Shubham, Ash, and Steph, already regulars at Grove Farm, came over as well. But the most exciting cameo, perhaps, was from the former Grove Farm die hard attendee, Christos. It was great to see him back after a longer break, fitting the Saturday session into his busy work and family life. Mike and Portia, Friends of Grove Farm, completed the count of the strong April conservation day team.

Mike took the gang to the hazel patch to cut back everything that didn't look like a hazel tree before Greener Ealing gets there. While the council team was very efficient at chopping things down, we felt they could pose a threat to the hazels, unknown to them and hidden in the overgrowth. We didn't want the young trees to be in danger. We were The Danger… To brambles, nettles and some wonky hawthorns.

Since Mike didn't anticipate such a turnout, more tools had to be brought from the container to supply them to GoodGymers, hungry to make environmental impact. Steph wasted no time in the meantime and grabbed a bag and a litter picker to clear the rubbish next to a tree trunk some inconsiderate people evidently use as a bar stool and leave their drink cans behind.

Mike cleared paths to individual hazel trees so that we could see them and chop things around them. The trimmings were piled up around each hazel tree to protect its roots. We went deep into the wilderness to find our way to the grove of more mature hazels, which Horsenden Farm volunteers were interested in - they would use the trunks for their projects like hazel weaving, provided we created access to the copse. It took a couple of daring GoodGymers with trimming equipment and one with a rake - all wearing shorts - to cut the stinging nettles around that area (I am still feeling a funny stinging on my shins seven hours later as I write this report!). We haven't cleared the full circle surrounding the hazel grove because one of us spotted a bird's nest, so we left that section intact.

Having cleared a large patch of overgrowth and freed the surviving hazel trees, we’re delighted to report that no tools, birds, humans and, hopefully, hazels were harmed during the session. We are looking for another opportunity to help nature at Grove Farm at the May conservation day.

When nine GoodGymers stood on muddy crossroads in the middle of Grove Farm woodland, Mike, the leader of the regular volunteer group, asked an existential question.

Who wants to be a beaver today?

Ash, Melissa, Thaiza and Kash decided they would identify as beavers and use their natural talents to help Mike strengthen the dams, slowing the flow of the Grove Farm stream.

Find me some wood!

Big and small, half-rotten or three-quarters-rotten logs and branches were stacked on top or wedged against the existing two wooden dams to prevent the construction from falling apart. The aim was to extend the dams' lifespan and prevent water from leaking onto the paths. Pretty good for faux beavers, right? How effective the intervention was, time will tell, but it was lots of fun - particularly for those prepared and wearing wellies like Thaiza!

Meanwhile, Devi, Richard, Harvey, Steph and Sevan were up at the wood anemone battlefield, fending off a bramble attack. The thorny plants never knew when to stop, so the blackberries kept growing ahead of the anemones blooming season next month. The good news was that, within the last three years of helping Friends of Grove Farm, we weakened the brambles enough that they haven't grown back in full power since. That means less work for the new GoodGymers, but, hopefully, more wood anemones for everyone to see at next month's conservation day!