many times there has been mowing until then. At this he blows a trumpet, and the mowers descend from the horse drawn carriage and head to the meadow. In livestock regions mowing has al- ways been one of the most important ru- ral jobs, because the mown grass is then kept as hay for winter cattle feed. To make this tough job at least a little easier for themselves, locals gathered in mobs, in an old Serbian custom that endures to- day in just a few villages. The villagers helped each other mutually, mowing on one landowner’s territory one day, then another the next day, and so on until all meadows were mown. Mowing was so in- tertwined into the life of the people that the time of its completion in midsummer spawned genuine festivities. The biggest and most famous such event in the world is Mowing on Rajac, which takes place on the first Sunday after St. Peter’s Day, cel- ebrated on 12 th July, precisely when the grass is ready for mowing. Mowers first competed in 1892, when the first folk fair was also held. However, it was Only in the mid-1960s that Mowing on Rajac became a tourist event. However, this festival is not just about cutting grass. It has always also been a gath- ering of folk dancing and singing groups
dressed in traditional costumes, an oppor- tunity for prominent locals to meet and agree on jobs, for girls and boys to see each other, and even for weddings to be agreed. The mow today attracts people from all over the world, because anyone can sign up, as long as they wear a folk costume. And thus every year for three days the fair in Rajac is flooded by tens of thousands of guests from Iceland, the United King- dom, Romania, Russia, the Netherlands, Hungary, Norway... Still, it is said around the mountains that the best performanc- es in the competitive part of the show for decades have been by mowers from Bos- nia’s Republika Srpska and from Monte- negro. They say that one of their swathes measures three metres. And it is still un- known whether one transport engineer from Shanghai withdrew on the eve of the competition a few years ago due to the size of the surface area of the plots to be mowed or the surface areas of the backs of the local mowers... But then in the review part of the Mow they don’t know about competing, but rather all mowers are released to start once, and when they move away from their stacks others follow one by one. Among around fifty strapping heroes, one is ulti- mately selected as the top mower, or the
RAJ NA ZEMLJI Još su stari putopisci plani- nu Rajac, nadomak Ljiga, nazvali rajem na zemlji. Na oko 700 metara nadmorske visine ona je sa svojom pri- jatnom, lekovitom i umiru- jućom klimom 1963. godine stavljena pod zaštitu drža- ve i proglašena regionalnim parkom prirode.
PARADISE ON EARTH Even the old travel writers
dubbed Rajac Mountain near Ljig a paradise on earth. At an elevation of around 700 metres above sea level, with its plea- sant, healing and soothing cli- mate, in 1963 it was placed under state protection and dec- lared a regional nature park.
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