Kat, Danny, Harvey, and Iram showed up in the quiet days between Christmas and New Year to keep the South Ealing Food Cupboard running smoothly.

In true seasonal style, Santa clearly needed to review his logistics - the second delivery van arrived first, and the first turned up later! Luckily both when GoodGymers were present! Despite the topsy-turvy timings, the team got straight to work. Danny, Harvey and Kat handled the heavy lifting, unloading the van and hauling crate after crate to the door while Irām helped with sorting and organisation.

The festive feast included mountains of carrots, pumpkins, turnips, cauliflower, pigs in blankets pizza, herbs, HelloFresh bags and loads of oranges. The citrus fruit needed careful sorting as many weren’t fit for stocking distribution. It was a bumper haul and most of the unpacking was impressively wrapped up within the hour!

Today's session for HANGOT had a surprisingly good start. There were 10 GoodGymers registered for the task, which was amazing in itself, including Will who made this is first GoodGym session. Welcome 👋🥳! Everyone also made it to HANGOT's secret undercover base on time and without getting lost. Amazing!

Once assembled, they walked to BlackBerry Corner, one of HANGOT's earliest orchards, with 20 apple trees and a long history of brambles, hence the name. As it was coming to the end of the growing season - for fruit and weeds - it was time to tidy up the orchard. Today's priorities were to:

1. Clear a ring around each apple tree to be free of weeds
2. Remove brambles and nettles from the paths
3. For completeness, cut down the open spaces too

The goal was to starve the ground of nutrients year after year to stunt and then eventually stop the weeds from growing back.

Work was divided up between the team with everyone grabbing a tool for their task. Shears, rakes, wheelbarrows, a pitchfork and a slasher were passed around. Working together, they made quick work of the most important jobs around the paths and trees.

At the same time, some of HANGOT's team were scything the open spaces, leaving lots to be raked up and moved to the distant compost heap. Will did a great job of raking throughout the task, which gave him a solid workout at his first session. A few others felt the fatigue in their muscles too by the end from chopping and slashing.

HANGOT were incredibly grateful that the huge GoodGym turnout had helped them complete all of the planned work. Their compost heap had also gone from zero to humongous, which will be really useful next year. There was even time for some to see their first quince tree fruiting and taking a chance on eating what they'd hand picked.