The one with the lifts.

This is what GoodGym is all about. Friendship, heavy lifting, connection and sore muscles.

On Saturday we helped Barking Food Forest prepare the ground for the new shed, rainwater tanks and vegetable planters.

Pretty standard stuff, right?

Nah. We lifted the shed from its current position (notice 1st lifted structure) and got down to work with the soil. Level it up, folks! Yes, ax pick your way through that soil. Are your muscles burning? Good sign!

Now, lets lift that water tank (notice 2nd lifted structure) and move it behind the shed! Classic PIVOT! PIVOT! PIVOT! moment. Check out our insta reel for all that GoodGym goodness.

By now, we got 25 minutes left in our community mission. The ground is weedless, quite levelled, the water tank is now comfortably behind the shed and after some slight acrobatics from superstar-volunteer from Barking Food Forest we are all at ground level wondering how much more levelled that does this area needs to be. Apparently much more. As we were.

But, hey is that another water tank at the opposite end of Barking Food Forest? Yes, it is and we want it to sit on top of the first one. After a dynamic risk assessment (fancy H&S terminology, brownie point) we lifted the tank (notice 3rd lifted structure), moved it from one end to another, PIVOT! PIVOT! PIVOT! and up it goes.

Another classic community mission at GoodGym Barking & Dagenham.

The lawn? Doable. Nothing that a persistent trim, a bit of patience and a rake couldn't handle.

The rain 🌧️? Sure, she can join for a while too.

As for the “friendly” cat 🐈…

Pancake 🥞 stared at me from afar like I’d invaded his personal kingdom. Unsure about friendly, but he’s definitely got attitude. Rawr 🐾