Would you still be able to live as they did 100 and more years ago?
Life on Pocar's homestead in the past and life in the houses today
The Pocar Homestead in Zgornja Radovna is more than 400 years old. Many generations of its inhabitants have changed, added to and even modernised it over the years. Yet for modern man, it is a time machine that takes us back centuries, back to the way our ancestors lived. If there is no electricity in the house in the evening and at night, you switch on the battery. Sometimes they lit a candle or a kerosene lamp. In any case, you need matches to light a candle or a kerosene lamp. What if you have to pee at night?
No taps where you could get a glass of water, no toilet as we know it today. At Pocar's homestead, the toilet stood outside, next to the pigsty - the place where the piglets lived. This is called a ''stub toilet''. Do you know why? Inside the small wooden house there is a toilet bowl - a wooden plank with a hole in the middle, and just an empty space underneath where mud and urine go. In winter and at night it was not pleasant to go out of the house with a candle, so both children and adults had ... pots under their beds!
Many old houses still have a black kitchen. Do you know what it looks like? Old houses didn't have chimneys, and they didn't have the kitchens we have today. The black kitchen is named after its colour. It is black from the soot, because the housewife cooked on a fire that she made on the hearth, not in the cooker. The smoke first rose to the ceiling where the sausages hung in the winter, then rolled out through the front door into the open air.
The black kitchen also contains the firebox for the rustic stove, which is in the next room, in the 'house'. It is pleasantly warm there, but the smoke stays in the kitchen. What would it be like in your kitchen at home if it was full of smoke every time you cooked?
Big key to the front door.
What is the key to the front door of your home? The key of Pocar House is really huge. Can you imagine having to carry it around in your pocket? Well, sometimes that wasn't necessary, because there was almost always someone at home. The house was only locked at night or if everyone went to work in the woods, on the mountain or in the fields.
DID YOU KNOW?
- Children used to walk to school. From Zgornja Radovna to Mojstrana is more than an hour walk.
- The Pocar homestead also houses home-made toys that children used to pass the time.