The local community of Drežnica, one of the jewels of Herzegovina, is rich in natural resources. The river Drežanka stretches along the entire town, which attracts many visitors with its beauty and has made life easier for the locals over the years. Because precisely because of its position, only on the stretch of this river, between 50 and 60 mills were built, of which now only a few have been restored, and two are still in operation and grind flour.
The tradition of grinding flour through the system of mills in Drežnica has not yet disappeared, on the contrary. In recent years, the locals have decided to begin the restoration of their 140-year-old family mills. Mensur Turkić’s mill is like that.
“My late grandfather Ibrahim Turkić inherited this mill from his father and, as far as his abilities allowed, he maintained this facility. What you see today – these are the original walls of the mill, as well as this part of the basket,” Mensur tells us.
Likewise, all the other parts of the mechanization by which the mill functions are all originally preserved as they were used a century ago. Mensur’s mill has been restored, but is not in operation, while flour is milled a few meters downstream near Pašan Pinjić.
“This was the whole process of starting the mill – we ran the water, ran the corn and adjusted the mill. This mechanism is for raising and lowering the mill,” he explains.
This region is characterized by corn flour because they have their own homegrown grain that they have been growing for more than 50 years, but they also grind all other types of flour.
“Then, in that period, they would grab the ground mass of corn here and say that they were looking at the granulation because there was a rule here – the finer granulation was used for bread, and the sharper, larger granulation was used for porridge,” says Turkić.
Even during the war, these mills played a key role in supplying the population with food.
“It was an obligation to mill for the people without any compensation, so we can say that these two mills saved us from hunger,” Pinjić said.
Although now they serve more as a reminder of a bygone era and as a tourist attraction, all the mechanisms and the way they were made can still be used in food production today. These mills are a representation of how to live in harmony with nature and use its goods without causing damage, which is a lesson from which we could learn a lot even today.
