Spirit of Prespa – A story of entrepreneurial spirit, fruit and agrotourism

The visit to Spirit of Prespa was made during a press trip with NAITM (National Association for Incoming Tourism of Macedonia), but, as always, everything written here reflects only my personal thoughts and opinions.

The road to the Prespa highlands winds through a patchwork of orchards in southwestern North Macedonia. Perched at around eighthundred meters above sea level, Spirit of Prespa is a family-run farm where rows of apple, plum, and cherry trees stretch across sixty thousand square meters. This is where we meet Ana, a fifth-generation fruit grower. Together with her sister, she is carrying the family farm into a new era—building on generations of tradition while reshaping it for the future.

"You have to keep evolving; otherwise, you stagnate," she says. It's a simple statement, but one that explains almost everything that has happened at Spirit of Prespa in recent years.

The family has been cultivating fruit on the shores of Lake Prespa since the 1960s, but Ana's path has taken her far beyond the orchards. She spent several years living in Dubai with her Scottish husband before deciding to return home. Back on the family farm, they moved into a house her father had begun building years earlier but never completed. Today, they are slowly renovating it while continuing to expand and reinvent the farm—one project at a time.

For years, the family's apples were exported almost exclusively to Russia. But after North Macedonia joined NATO, that market largely disappeared, forcing the family to rethink their business. Serbia became an important export destination, but Ana and her sister also looked closer to home. In 2018, they opened the farm to visitors, turning to agritourism as a way to diversify their income and build a more resilient future.

Today, visitors come to stroll through the orchards, enjoy home-cooked regional dishes, and experience the Prespa region through the rhythms of everyday life on the family farm. During harvest season, guests can pick their own apples to take home, while the small farm shop is stocked with seasonal produce alongside the family's homemade jams, marmalades, and other fruit-based specialties year-round.

To extend the season, the orchards have been expanded with blueberries, raspberries, and ornamental pumpkins. Spring begins a little later here than in Skopje—at this altitude, by a couple of weeks—which means the apple blossom arrives in a slower rhythm. First come the flowers, then the berries, and finally the apple harvest. The later blooming of the plum trees also helps reduce the risk of late frosts damaging the year’s crop.

The cultivation is well planned. The low apple trees are carefully pruned and spaced just over two metres apart. Each tree can yield around 100 kilos of fruit. Varieties such as Red Delicious and Idared are grown here. The latter produces larger yields and is appreciated for its acidity and long shelf life. The plums are at least as important. A large proportion goes into jam, marmalade and other processed products – such as the farm’s rakija.

Among the apple trees, simple tables are arranged beneath a small roofed shelter. Here, guests can sit down with coffee and cake, surrounded by neat rows of orchards. The pause becomes more than a meal—it offers a quiet introduction to local food culture and the pace of life in the Prespa region.

On the table is gjomleze, a regional specialty that resembles a layered pancake cake but is, in essence, a savoury bread or pie. The batter—made from flour, yogurt, eggs, and water—is poured in thin layers and cooked one at a time. After each layer, the surface is brushed with oil before the next is added. Traditionally, it is prepared over an open fire beneath a domed iron lid known as a sač, a process that can take up to five hours. The result is a crisp exterior with a soft, layered interior. Once considered everyday food in rural households, made from simple, readily available ingredients, gjomleze is today regarded as one of the region’s most distinctive traditional dishes.

The large gjomlez served to visitors is baked by an elderly woman in the area. For her work, she receives the equivalent of around 50 euros. The roses that adorn the tables come from a neighbor. Ana tries to buy everything locally as much as possible and let more people in the area take part in the business.

The coffee is accompanied by the farm’s own rakija. Here, spirits are distilled from fruit grown on the property—apples, plums, and cherries among them. Small, narrow glasses are passed around the table, each sip carrying distinct notes of the fruit it comes from. Rakija is deeply rooted in North Macedonian food culture, and in the Prespa region it is common for families to produce their own versions using fruit from their orchards.

Guests from Skopje return year after year, a continuity that has shaped the way Ana thinks about the farm. It is also why she is always planning ahead—introducing a new activity, developing a new product, or creating another place to sit among the trees. Spirit of Prespa is, in that sense, about more than fruit. It is a story of how a family farm adapts to changing conditions while remaining rooted in what has been passed down through generations.

I leave Spirit of Prespa with a sense of renewed energy, shaped as much by Ana as by the place itself—by her entrepreneurial drive, her sense of hospitality, and the quiet ease with which she welcomes guests. She does not speak in grand visions or promises of quick success, but in next steps: planting something new, extending the season a little further, and giving returning visitors a reason to come back. Perhaps that is where the farm’s strength lies— in its steady willingness to evolve, without losing its connection to place, to family history, and to the land that has been cultivated here for generations, at the edge of the snow-capped mountains.

How do you get to Spirit of Prespa?

Spirit of Prespa is located in southwestern North Macedonia, between Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa. It can be difficult to find information on how to visit the farm, but my best tip is to contact them via their Facebook page: Spirit of Prespa.

A visit to the farm is recommended if you are in the area!
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