Our elderly had around 300 hectares of grape vines. We say, we had to dig it with our hands, rummaging, we used to call it then, you know rummaging. You had to dig at least half a meter deep to plant the vine. And, in the third year, the vine would sprout. In the meantime, there we planted onions. We call it karamide, onions were planted there so that the vine would sprout later.
Then we also had rakia and wine cellars. Well-known cellars. Rahovec was built later. Romans were in these hills of ours, they had vineyards then that turned into a desert when they left. Our people came here and started rummaging again. I think they planted vines. We had black, white, Hamburg grapes. We had all kinds of grapes. We had all kinds of grapes that existed in Yugoslavia, and all kinds of cherries and apricot, apple and pear.
Our people were then what we call ‘merchant wanderers.’ That’s how we called them skitači. No matter if they went to Macedonia or Slovenia or Croatia, Bosnia, whenever they learned about a fruit, they would take it and place it in a potato so it doesn’t dry out. When they came back, they grafted it. There was no fruit that Janjevo did not have.
Nikola Brkić was born on December 4, 1965 in Janjevo. Mr. Brkić is an agrarian and a trader. He received an elementary education in Janjevo, and in 1987 he moved to Zagreb, Croatia, where he continued his trade activities. In 1999, he decided to return to Janjevo, and today he mainly works as an agrarian.