Winter Arrives for Lucia Day
The landscape puts on it's winterclothes when the first snow arrives. Clear and frosty nights leaves the path from the wwoofer house to the barn icy and slippery. The first job of the morning: to reach the barn without falling! After this it seems easy to shovel the cow shit and clean the milking machine.
The horses enjoy the snow and seems to be in their right element, they easily stay warm with their winterfur. Soon they can start the work in the forest, pulling logs to the house.
On the 13th of December we celebrated the Lucia day, as the tradition is here, we had Lusekattor, a sweedish kind of sweet bread with safran.
In the afternoon the horses were prepared in front of the wagon to take us all to church. We sat all 12 wwoofers on the wagon close together on lambskins and sang christmas hymns through the small villages. Unfortunately, there was only very few people out this beautiful saturday afternoon, we saw through the windows the TV's turned on in the livingrooms.
The darkness fell slowly as we walked the last bit in the icy wind to the church in Skärstad. It was empty one hour before the concert should start, but slowly people came in from the cold. There were candles on the walls, from the ceiling and all the way down the rows of benches in golden candelabrums, the light was glittering on the red faces, warmth spread between the people moving closer together on the benches to make space for newcomers. When the doors closed at five o'clock it was dark as the night outside and the latest arrivers crowded together against the walls.
The churchbell ringed loud and long and ceased the mumble of the crowd. When the last bell died out all was silent and the choir started singing. Girls with silver in their hair and a candle in the hand, dressed totally in white, singing wih their small light voices walked the Lucia Procession up through the church. The concert had begun.
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