Five GoodGymmers, two of whom were doing double duty as regular Sims Hill Shared Harvest members, helped at their Community Work Day clearing the cabbage patch.

Alex had a go on the Power Plow (it turns out the power comes from the operator’s shoulders), Mel took a fork to some stubborn grass (pulling it by hand is forking hard!), and Alison took care not to damage Paul’s cabbages.

We gratefully accepted tea and a biscuit (it would have been root not to!) and they lettuce stop for a photo in one of the poly tunnels.

If I had 11 medals today they would have been handed out gratefully to the 11 heroes who braved the rain and cold to come and help out with weeding the Berry maze. Truly epic efforts from everyone today!

A decision to defer our secondary task of leaflet distribution meant that we could focus all our efforts on clearing weeds from a couple of extra patches in the maze. (I confess to feeling more than a little pride in seeing Barney point out the patches we had cleared previously). This was successfully achieved with hoes, trowels and gardening gloves, donned as much for warmth as hand protection.

Cold hands were also an obstacle for our trio of post-bashers who not only reset a couple of the wooden boundary markers but somehow managed to manipulate a screw driver on the cross sections.

With the briefest of pauses for some goji berries and yellow raspberries (check out Matt's enjoyment savouring these in the photo) and a traditional look-how-cold-we-are photo, we finally warmed up in the best way possible, a brisk 3k run back to warm drinks and - quite possibly - cake.

A gorgeous sunny day saw almost 30 people join us today for our tasks to Manor Woods Valley and Golden Hill community garden.

Liam kindly offered to take the Golden Hill group with Richard acting as backmarker and Clo and Charlie as photographers. There they were greeted with an amazing assortment of tasks - ranging from book stall sorting to sandwich making (pear chutney, hummus and nasturtium!) and laying out mint on the children's sensory trail!

The remaining folks joined me in our run along the Malago Greenway to meet Martin and a few other members of the Manor Valley Conservation Group (MVCG) at the secret orchard (which thanks to MVCGs hard work is not so secret any more).

We took shears to bramble risings and donned hard hats to cut down any elder trees that might be obstructing the fruit trees before doing a little harvesting of our own (picking from the trees rather than the floor to try and avoid sharing any half eaten specimens with badgers!). The elder was then cut down to size and used to build wildlife friendly deadwood hedges.

(Apologies for the gender bias of the title which was chosen purely in the interests of run title punnery)

No rain meant no sheltering in the poly tunnel at Sims Hill today; instead we were able to enjoy some very late summer sunshine out in the field weeding around the beetroot and leek crops.

Head farmer James explained that the weeds had got a little out of control and showed us to use hoes to uncover the paths running between crops and then pull out by hand any that had got in between them.

With several GoodGym members also being involved with Sims Hill we met up with a few friends so there ended up being a fairly size-able contingent of us today. Consequently we were able to clear a good space before lunchtime, when most of us headed off in our own separate ways.

Sims Hill host a monthly workday every third Sunday and welcome volunteers so do feel free to pop over one day - no doubt GoodGym will be back soon too.

A really happy morning out at StreetGoat this morning. There's something about goats wandering around that makes even the least desirable of tasks a joy. After a fairly testing 5k run uphill to get there - and an early start, there were still no shortage of volunteers to collect goat poo. Fi and Laura alone managed to collect two large buckets of the stuff!

Not to be outdone, our second team of Poo Collectors - Alison and Alice managed to work miracles on the goat bedroom producing a poo-free makeover that was clearly appreciated by our hooved companions - and amazingly they even had time for one or two photographs :)

The rest of the group were continuing the makeover theme by making available additional living space via the removal of assorted brambles and litter using rakes and wheelbarrows. Lovely to see Shona getting stuck in on her 'day off' and the joy on David's face as he discovered the turbo span adjustment feature on his very special rake (also nice to see said rake find its way back at the end and not depart along with David). Well done to Maria too on managing to move so many brambles with a punctured wheelbarrow.

With all this happy occupation, it was no surprise that the goats wanted in on the act - as can be seen in Alice's lovely photo of one of the goats with its wheelbarrow. But of course the star of Street Goat has always been Lily and it was particularly nice to catch up a bit while she munched happily down on the green around her tether.

Thanks for a great morning everyone and thanks to our host Amy for the post-task refreshments. (Incidentally, anyone who is interested in spending additional time at Street Goat and can't wait for our next visit in November should note that the group meet there for a work party every first Saturday)

Who would have thought a humble line of railings could have such an impact on the look of a place? Certainly the primary colour sections outside the Filwood community centre make the place look that extra bit more fun and welcoming, so it was great to be able to help out with some of the painting today.

After a (fairly challenging) hill up from Victoria park we were split into teams by our host Tim, with one group for each colour and one for a bit of extra scraping and brushing down.

The bulk of the painting had already been completed during some previous volunteer sessions so our job was to find any bits that had been missed - and make some difficult decisions about which colour to choose on some of the boundary supports between adjoining sections!

There's really nothing as satisfying as a bit of painting so it was fab to spend an hour out in the sunshine helping to support the amazing work of the new administration team at the centre - which even looked in danger of closing down at one stage.

Welcome to our new recruits Andy and Tom - we certainly needed the extra pairs of hands today.