Pager Duty are a great tech specialist company (ever wondered who fixes it when Uber Eats bugs out? These guys!) with an office in London's Moorgate and they pride themselves on getting staff involved in community projects - not just as a one off - but they want to build relationships and make a difference. 💾 💻 Having reached out to GoodGym they were looking for an away day with a difference and we wanted to make sure they would have a great time but also see a concrete difference being made.

Two tasks were organised, one heading to Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park (originally called the cemetery group but later changed to Tower group) and the other to Hackney City Farm - this is how the Farm group got on. 🐶

AAs Peter from Camden and Yianny from Lambeth turned up at the PD offices bright and early so we could meet the volunteers and tell them a bit about GoodGym and the tasks, to be met by Emeline who was our point of contact. 16 People were signed up for the Farm team and we had almost a full house with one person being transferred across to Tower team and Tesh was appointed as team leader to rally everyone and make sure we stayed on track. 🏃

By 11am we were off at a pace, chatting merrily on the 2.5 km walk along the streets of Moorgate, Shoreditch and Hackney and avoiding busy traffic. It was lovely to find out about the work that Chiedu is doing and also to share stories of Nigeria, speak to Jill about PD's reach as well as seeing the bubbly personalities coming to the fore ready for a shift at the farm (Karolina was ready to pull up trees with her bare hands if necessary!) 🏋

Robyn was there to meet us at the farm and divided the group into two, the first smaller group had to clear out one of the shelters which was being used for storage as a new top secret animal was due to arrive any day, and the the bigger group was off to rake muck! Ashika had said before setting off that her job was to cuddle lambs if there were any and of course we didn't want to disappoint so lambs, an adult and baby donkey, geese, ducks, chickens, pigs and goats were all in attendance to watch the group move tonnes of manure from the compost pile out into the main field to fill a hole that had been prepared. 🐐🐑🐓

Fortunately we had at least two country folk / people with farm experience in the group with Jon who owns 14 goats and sheep with his family and Constant who grew up around Strasbourg and was no stranger to the farmer's life. Both got stuck in (with no regard for their footwear) and the example was contagious spreading to the rest of the group. 💩

The groups settled in to work and it was lovely to share stories and hear more about the PD crew, thanks for keeping it interesting David, George & Damian.

The shifting group managed to completely clear and sweep the shelter, taking heavy lantern holders to the basement, transferring a milk churn, moving the old Hackney Farm sign to a new home and were rewarded by the absence of a single solitary rat sighting - alive that is. 🐀

Fast forward 90 minutes and both tasks were complete, an astonishing amount of manure had been transported wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow (Jill special mention here), flattened (I'm thinking of Josh) and even a fluid strategic system of raking-dumping-barrowing-dropping put in place (thanks Liviu, Joshua, Thomas) in the way that only tech minded people can. ⏱

And that was lunch, Ottolenghi was on the menu and delivered an hour early but was stored in a fort knox of a room which we almost couldn't open again, but alls well that end with lunch and the team settled down their well earned meal. A special thank you here to Eddie and the team at City Farm cafe who very generously agreed with AA Yianny to let the crew use the facilities for lunch having brought their own food - the GoodGym connection came through - and even provided cutlery and plates! ⭐⭐

The look on the faces of Tim and Tony around the picnic benches said it all, grateful it was lunch time but also happy with what had been achieved!

It was farewells all round and our sincere hope that everyone had a great day, we certainly enjoyed having you and the Hackney Farm team were impressed with how much got done and send their thanks. Next time you are looking for a great day out for staff PD team.... Page me! 😉