About
We are a small family-run farm in the foothills of the Pohorje mountains in Mislinja, Slovenia and specialize in juice and fruit products from non-commercial, heirloom-variety apples grown in traditional meadow orchards.
Domačija pri Ramšaku
The name Domačija Pri Ramšaku translates to "The Ramšak Homestead" and is our farm's local/traditional name since the 1800s. In the Slovenian countryside a farm typically has a "local" name that stays with the farm regardless of the legal name of the family living there. The first people to develop the farm were named Ramšak—a common last name in the local Koroška region—and the name stayed with the farm.
The farm's history
Our farm was founded in the 1800s by the Ramšak family, who gave the farm its name—Pri Ramšaku. Throughout the 1800s and 1900s, the Ramšak family maintained a thriving homestead, raising livestock, growing grains and produce, and operating a grain mill and sawmill on the unforgiving mountainous terrain. But for lack of a younger generation to take over—as is unfortunately all too common in the rural European countryside—the farmstead drifted into dormancy in the early 2000s.
The last representative of the Ramšak lineage living on the farm kept up small-scale farming for as long as he lived on the property. Operating as Center Gaia d.o.o., he produced and sold apple juice, cider vinegar, and herbal products throughout Slovenia, but slowly scaled down production and eventually sold the property in late 2022 to the Mastnak family, who took on and continued operation of the farm.
The voice you're reading on this page is that of Mastnak family. We are primarily a father-son team who took over the farm in 2023 and have enthusiastically, if on a small and humble scale compared to the former Ramšak family, continued cultivating the land to present day. Although we are not originally from the Koroška region nor full-time farmers, we have done our best to keep the land in cultivation, plant a new generation of fruit trees, and preserve the farm's operation and tradition.
Current focus on traditional heirloom varieties
Since taking over the farm, we have emphasized using heirloom apple varieties grown in our tall-trunk meadow orchards and small-scale, traditional production methods. The apples varieties we use tend to be more flavorful and aromatic than conventional apples, but also grow less abundantly and consistently, so they are rarely grown on large-scale commercial farms, and you will not find them in grocery stores.
We choose to grow these varieites out of appreciation for tradition, our love of heirloom varieties, and also motivated by the practical reality that we are a small-scale, family operation and not full-time farmers. Because our resources and manpower is limited, we prefer to produce less and offer interesting, high-quality products than try to compete on a basis of scale or price with high-volume commercial farms.
Of interest: Since moving to the property, we have made a point of photographing and documenting the apple and pear varieties on our farm, which you can read about on a dedicated page:
Pictures and descriptions of heirloom varieties →Similarly, we have put together a short description of the ecologically-important tall-trunk meadow orchard habitat characteristic of the Slovenian agricultural countryside and our farm:
Description of the meadow-orchard habitat →