Fields

Agriculture was one of the main factors that shaped Goričko Nature Park landscape that we know today and was always an important aprk of local economy, even today. Farms on Goričko were always small and owned some lifestock and cultivated some land. Today most of farms are only cultivating land. Small, mosaic like fields on Goričko tells us the traditionaly strong bond between people of Goričko and soil. Of course, fields are also habitats and contribute important role to Goričko landscape diversity. The main crops here are cereals like wheat, barley, rye, triticale and oat but also maize, oil pumpkins, sunflowers, buckwheat, rapeseed, potatoes and others. Culturaly significant are buckwheat, which appears in many traditional dishes and oil pumpkins, from which the traditional pumpkinseed oil is produced. 


Fields with oil pumpkins   M. Podletnik

Fields of Goričko are the most colorful in summer, when among cereals there are blooming blue cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus), red common poppy (Papaver rhoeas) and rare purple common corn-cockle (Agrostemma githago). These plants have been present on Goričko fieldsthrough many generations and are today known as tipical botanical element in Goričko landscape. Because of todays patterns in intensive farming, which include filtering of seeds, using aggresive weedkillers and mineral fertilizers, biodiversity of those plants is slowly dissapearing. 


Cornflowers and poppies are also common on the edges of fields   M. Podletnik