Lights on!

We have twenty liters water all the time in big kettles on the wooden stove, batteries for the flash lights, matches and candles, canned food and juice, a generator at the shopping list. We are prepared but this latest storm lasted for hours. Our christmas tree had fallen by the village road - though it was quite a small misfortune compared with that the 23 metres high Christmas tree in Helsinki had fallen, too and compared to people who had had trees fallen on their house.

We had electricity off over 16 hours and got it back just in time to keep my 20 kg meat frozen - I had filled our storage before Christmas.. We buy all our meat from a fabulous local farm Nystu Lantbruk that has their sheep and cows grazing at the forest and meadows by the sea in Wattkast village in Korppoo. I didn't want to loose my steaks!

It's our fortune that we have a wooden stove to cook on and the other ovens keep us warm. It is cosy to sit in the candel light but a bit difficult to actually do something. So we were getting a bit bored with the dim atmosphere when we decided to take the car and drive to centrum of our island and to church to sing Christmas carols. We could see which of the houses were out of electricity because there were no X-mas lights, only a weak candel light from the windows. 

In the centrum and church they had electricity, so people sat on their seats and enjoyed singing both old and new carols. Then in the middle of the Silent Night the church went dark. The organ faded away. People continued to sing. I was moved and all the complexities that we had had without running water, difficulties to do every day chores became unforgettable. 

When writing this I can hear our roof banging again and I know many on our island are still sitting by the candel light, so I hope it won't get so bad  during the night. We have been working outdoors for hours today saving our building material when the tent over them had flown away. Please, no suprises next morning... And we haven't lifted up the Christmas tree yet, just in case.