The Name Nobody Knows

We did not name it.

Long before we dreamed of cabins, slow mornings, and guests, this hillside beneath Ivanščica already had a name: Dushka. No one in the village knows exactly why. It simply… has always been Dushka.

In the mid-1800s, this land was dense forest owned by noblemen. With the decline of feudalism, the land passed into our family’s hands. Generations before us cleared it row by row, transforming part into orchards with old varieties of apples, pears, plums, and walnuts. The rest became rotational farmland, cultivated with oxen until the 1990s.

Summers here were lively — neighbor helping neighbor, day laborers lending strength, songs carried across the fields. When work was done, tables filled with bread, wine, and laughter until dawn. Payment was often not in money, but in mutual help: ploughing a neighbor’s field with our oxen or sharing breeding livestock. It was a way of life built on trust, community, and celebration.

By the late 1990s, the fields gradually became meadow, mowed once a year. Soon afterward, neat rows of fir, spruce, and pine were planted for Christmas. For nearly a decade, the land was drawn in evergreen lines — some trees still stand tall today.

Then came the quiet years. No harvest. No songs. Nature slowly reclaimed Dushka, wrapping it in wild greenery and making it almost impassable.

In 2018, we inherited the land. Two years later, we began clearing the brush. Step by step, an idea was born — not just to clean it, but to bring life back.