We are a group of individuals, adults and children, whose common desire was to live in harmony with nature. We started meeting more than 10 years ago. In 2013, 4 formal members founded the Mokri Potok Cooperative Ltd. and bought the abandoned Mokri Potok village from the municipality of Kočevje. We made a plan for 7 off-grid houses of which 2 are finished and 2 are under construction. We generate electricity through solar panels, and water is provided by filtered rainwater and a small forest spring. We are passionate about building with natural materials such as wood, clay and hemp, farming with permaculture principles and socialising around the fire.

Two families live here permanently in a peaceful environment surrounded by woods, while up to 20 people, including guests and volunteers, gather around the fire on weekends in the summer. We are organised on the principles of private plots for each family, while at the same time connecting on common land, where we are in the process of developing the infrastructure.

Our ambition is to inspire others to live a more natural lifestyle and to connect with their neighbours by our own example.

About Mokri Potok

Mokri Potok .. an old Gottsche village, whose history dates back to 1498. At that time it had 17 houses and a church in the middle of the village. In 1941, the first villagers started to move out and only four farms remained. Around 1965, the last villagers left the village. Today, only the foundations of a few houses and the remains of a mill are visible.

The first ideas for the creation of an ecovillage were born in 2008, when a few individuals decided to take a look at the old villages of Kočevje. Surrounded by forests, two streams (Mokri potok and Veseli potok), native fruit trees such as apple, pear and a few cherry trees planted throughout the village, the location of Mokri potok seemed ideal for an ecovillage.

What the Gottsche people ripped from the forest over six centuries, the forest has taken back over the last six decades. Was the first a victory of man over nature and the second a victory of nature over man? Perhaps! Was it better in the past than it is today? It is hard to say. It is true that the forest is overgrowing former homes and it is true that the world is poorer for a certain human community. Less grows in the fields and there are fewer cattle in the stables. Kočevje, where the Gottsche people left it, has remained largely uninhabited, but it has become an island in the middle of Europe, where forests abound, where there is plenty of space for deer, roe deer, wild boar, capercaillie, bear and lynx; where cattle, small cattle and bees graze on the flowering meadows. It has become probably one of the richest and most biodiverse enclosed areas in Europe.

With its special natural, civilisational and historical heritage, Kočevje remains an oasis in the middle of this part of Europe, an oasis that must be preserved as it is and protected from the dangers of aggressive encroachment, of modern industrialised tourism. Everything that can still preserve the memory of the community of people who have persevered for centuries in this beautiful, but hard-to-live-in, environment of unspoilt nature must be protected, restored and appropriately commemorated. If we succeed in this, Kočevje will once again be a paradise found here, for those who once lost it and for the rest of us. 

  • Quoted in Wilhelm Tschinkel, Gottsche folklore in customs, traditions, fairy tales, stories, legends and other folklore traditions