This is our third time escaping the white season of Svaneti for warmer Tbilisi. Our reasons for doing this have been several. We don’t get any guests at the guest house in winter: they all go straight to Mestia for the snow sports, and the trekking trails which attract them to us are closed. Water and electricity both suffer much more in winter: indeed, on the day of our departure, with snow coming down much of the night and that day, the power was off more than on. And the stress we feel from these challenges is also much higher.
The closing of our shop while we’re away will have less impact on the village this time. This is because our neighbor and friend has opened a Spar shop on the main road, which, frankly, we’re delighted with, as it’s a big sign of progress and hope, and daring too. If he can keep it open all winter, he’ll have no competition from us.
Weeks before we leave, I make a list of things to do to get the house ready for our absence. Some of these are really important, like eliminating the chance of water in the unheated buildings (cafe too) freezing in the toilets and faucets and cracking them. Bitter experience… Once the water is turned off, I can then empty out the toilets with a large rag, and also physically disconnect all faucets from their walls and drain them. Of course, if I don’t reconnect these before turning the water back on in the spring, every wall connection (at least 17 of them) will gush water into the surrounding space! Now, the water is free to freeze in its plastic pipes, which don’t crack or burst from this. We have several large tanks of water left in the house, as well, too large to freeze, and available for any short mid-winter visits I might make.
We also turn off all electricity in the house. The only exceptions to this are our chest freezer, still in use, and power to the video cameras and their modem, through which I can observe what’s happening around the house exterior, live and recorded.
Empty and clean the three fridges; leave their doors propped ajar to deter mold buildup. Harvest everything planted, especially potatoes, cabbages, herbs, carrots, melons, pears and apples. Plant garlic for next spring. Sort the potatoes into small seed ones for next year, and everything else for eating. Put the sacks of them onto cardboard, and cover them with plastic and old blankets to stop them from freezing.
Separate list of things to pack and take. The harvested food; other perishables from the shop; our own clothes and personal items. I’m a big practitioner of list-making. It helps me break big tasks into smaller, more manageable ones, prioritize things, and add new items while crossing off done ones.
Make sure the fences are in good repair, as I described last week. Keep the destructive big domestic critters out!
Close all windows, draw all curtains shut. Strip the beds and store the bedding away safe from mice. Padlock the front gates as we leave, and give spare keys to a neighbor. Fond farewells. We’d not be doing this at all if infrastructure conditions in winter were better; but we do actually have the luxury of this choice, and don’t take it for granted: we have worked hard to own an apartment in Tbilisi to retreat to.
This year was different in that the first big snow started a couple of days before we left. At least the roads remained mostly clear of it, being still too warm for it to settle on them and not melt. But the fall trees had not had time, or wind, to let them shed their leaves. So it was really a case of winter starting before autumn was over. Even as we left, it continued to snow, down to more than an hour’s drive below the village, before this reluctantly gave way to rain on most of western Georgia. I’d had to bang the branches of all the fruit trees the day before, bowed almost double from their weight of wet snow, so they wouldn’t break off. Tarpaulin on the car the day before we left, so I wouldn’t have to brush off the night’s snow.
And we were off in the morning, not panicking, in good time, because we were ready. Goodbye, Svaneti, for now. We wish you a good winter season, the right amount of snow, strong electricity and flowing water, time to finish your potato and other harvests and store your firewood. Hunker down and take heart.
BLOG by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
