2022-12 Proper Winter

All the decorations were up and the tree was in place. The Swedish like to put stars in their windows, and other decorations like a Swedish straw jul goat or a tomte. I’m a bit unsure of the tomte which remind me a bit of gnomes in the UK, but I like joining in with the traditions.

Heavy Snow

There was a least one significant snowfall, and the snowploughs were out on the main road. I made sure to clear the pathway to the village in case the snow froze in place.

We have a local Volvo L50 owner who provides a driveway-clearing service. We’ve signed up for it. We have a snowblower but it can only throw so far and some days there is just too much snow. The L50 clears the driveway of any significant snow in about a minute. If there is sheet ice it also stops by and scrapes the surface before adding a layer of grit.

FoodCellar

This month I built up shelves for the food cellar and wooden boxes. I confess it is all from IKEA. Despite having wood and tools, I just ran out of time to design, saw, plane, and build some myself.

I helped move food supplies in but we were cautious. By design, the room is directly vented to the outside world. I had to block the vent as the food cellar went below zero one night which could spoil some items or damage containers. Outside the temperature had dropped to -25C. We manually monitored the temperature in the room from that point and it generally stayed 1-3.5C which was fine.

In the long term, I’ll try to find an automatic air vent cover, similar to a greenhouse self-operating vent. I could add an electric point in the room. With power, I could add a small frost protection heater that comes on if the temperature gets near zero.

It is only a small room but even with a big Christmas shop we barely started to fill it. We’ll need to be thinking about how we rotate or otherwise check for food expiry. This is the first time we have lived together in a home with any significant food storage.

SnowShoes

When the fine powdery snow changed to thicker heavier snow, I went out on snowshoes (snöskor) up the nearby hill. This was where the logging operation had been so I tried taking pictures of the village. The light wasn’t great but it was a new view to me. It also felt quite fun to be out like an explorer in the snow.

Vertical Solar

We got an email from our solar contact saying that our solar panels had arrived and that he could come and install them immediately. This was unexpected as there had been a lot of supply issues. He was able to put them up and gave us some pots of honey as he was also a beekeeper. On the shortest day of the year, we could see the vertical panels make a tiny but welcome amount of power. In contrast, the array on the roof was under about 25cm of frozen snow. The roof array could not make enough power in that condition to even trigger the inverter to come on. The vertical panels collected no snow and faced the winter sun, even if it was a brief sun.

If they produce well in spring and autumn when electric prices are high, I’m hoping these panels will pay for themselves in under 10 years. Especially at the moment as electric prices are uncharacteristically high. The high prices are due to the colder winter and the political situation with Russia cutting gas supplies to mainland Europe. I’d really like one day for the property to be net-zero or better in electricity use.

Swedish Christmas

The Swedish celebrate Christmas on the 24th, and we were lucky enough to be invited to a friend’s house.

Everyone watched Christmas-themed cartoons at 15:00 on the TV which is a Swedish tradition. This was on SVT (similar to BBC in the UK).

While we were there my friend who is with the volunteer local fire service was called out. While he was out, the tomte (Father Christmas) arrived and gave presents to the children. The tomte left, just missing my friend who came back from the fire call.

We caught up with our UK family via video on the 25th. Video calls are now routine and I call my family every other week to help to stay in contact.