Warning, this post has no real purpose and is just to let you know what I have been up to. Riding fail, I haven't ridden since Thursday and probably won't until tomorrow. Part of this reason is that on Friday I awoke and realized I must have overdone it on my Thursday ride as my calf muscle was pulled again. Much, much less painful this time but it has kept me in a solid limp ever since. It is also pulled a different location, instead of being on the inside rear at the top of the calf it is closer to the outside of the lower third of the back of the calf. Ah the fun times of rehab! I stayed pumped full of Advil and Aleve until Monday and am now without anything and while I limp, I am mobile. To top it off, my bad leg now also has a nice sized bruise on the front of my shin, right above my ankle. I swear sometimes it would be easier to cut the leg off. At least my lungs have cleared and I can breathe again.
Despite not riding, we have been getting a lot done around the farm over the long weekend. Our place is an old farmhouse from the early 1900's that has had extensive updates done through the years. The issues we are currently running into is the previous homeowners updates are very....amateur(??) and not well thought out. A lot of things you look at and go "huh?", from the rubber hose instead of a pipe on our water main to a room full of electrical outlets and only one works. The current thing we are "fixing" is the front porch, it was covered in heavily cracked concrete. The pieces were cracked enough that some moved when you walked on them and in addition to looking horrible it was becoming a safety hazard. Thus one of our projects this weekend was to tear the concrete up and much to our surprise there was a wooden porch underneath! Some boards need replaced and it badly needs powerwashed thanks to being under concrete for who knows how long but it is a decent porch. We can't figure out why someone thought it would be easier to cover it in concrete versus fixing a few boards but there are a number of things we can't figure out about this place.
Another project this weekend was our back porch, it was black with mold and such and looked horrible. It was also skirted in broken, rotted, red painted lattice and had a "wall" of the same lattice on one side of the deck. Our plan was to clean it up and put a product called Restore on it which will put a bedliner type coating on the deck. This should stop it from eroding further and should hopefully give the deck another 10-15 years. We cut the "wall" down, powerwashed the deck and replaced a single board and the deck looks AMAZING. It appears the deck was also painted red a long, long time ago and was never maintained. The powerwasher did a phenomenal job of cleaning the paint and mold and "schmutz" off of the wood and while the boards show neglect with cracking it looks like a new deck. We are still going to put the Restore down to help the neglected boards but if nothing else it should look amazing.
Our final "big" project was to take down the winter pasture and kick everyone out into the actual pasture for the summer. The horses seemed to appreciate the turnout and are quickly eating everything down. It was scary to see how wallowed out the gate post holes had gotten and it made me glad to not have to rely on them anymore. Next winter we will have a much better plan in place and will use round pen panels, learn from mistakes!
No riding for me tonight but there is a nice long trail ride tomorrow with some friends. Will be bringing the TWH and lots of bug spray, will let you know how it goes!
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