Kadrije, Ava and Sladjana are finding the best company in nature. They are the early spring "bees" that are in search of magical plants. For years they have been collecting them, where they produce healing tea for various diseases. The knowledge they have about each flower in nature is extraordinary, but it is not enough. The three women from Kosovo are also cultivating other plants to a large extent, where throughout the year, they sell tea with different flavors. They also have requests for the institutions that did give them a helping hand.

With the blooming of primroses in nature, Kadrije Mustafa from Kamenica spends most of her time in nature. Since the war, she provides her only income from tea production, cultivating about 30 plants.

Willingness characterizes the director of "Bio Alta", although, things have not always gone well for her.

"We cultivate most of the plants ourselves. We cultivate oregano, mint, nettle, kitchen spices, rosemary, lemon balm, lavender, all of which we grow ourselves. We pick other plants in nature. The first flower that blooms is the primrose flower, it is for respiration, it is very good for bronchitis, nettle is also for allergies, for iron, for anemia, for various infections. St. John's wort is also for various infections. The Linden tea is already well known. Mint is also good; we grow it ourselves. The rest are picked in nature", she says.

While counting the effects of organic tea, Kadrije repeats several times that "a tea is better than a coffee". The name of her business has already taken place on many market shelves in Kosovo.

"The number of teas we produce is close to 30. Most of what we produce, we keep it here for ourselves, what we pack, we also do the packaging. We take most of them to "Agro-produkti" in Istog, where we took the first steps, we learned which plants are poisonous and which are non-poisonous. We know which flowers are poisonous, we have a list. We have learned a lot from trainings, and got where we are now ", adds Mustafa.

In addition to markets, a large number of seniors make direct requests to purchase her products. The woman from the neighborhood "Malesia" says that they opened the business six years ago, but have not received the support of the institutions.

"It’s not that we had a lot of support from the institutions. From the Municipality (of Kamenica), we can say, nothing", she says.

In addition to the lack of support, she also talks about the challenges faced by a woman who deals with such business.

"For a woman, it is very difficult to deal with these things, because I do the women's work too, because this needs a lot of work, a lot of care, so that the seedlings can grow on their own. I grow the seedlings myself, and I plant them", she says, among other things.

The woman from Kamenica, who cultivates various plants on 30 acres of land, says that the place where she is drying them does not meet the conditions.

"This facility, this space, it is very small. There is a lot of work, but thanks to my husband and the children, with their help, I am where I am now... It is very difficult to work here in such a small space even though I tried to grow this business, to grow it as much as possible. It's very difficult, but I made a request to the municipality in the past for a slightly larger space, and I'm the only business that deals with aromatic medicinal plants here in Kamenica, but they didn't want to help us", says Kadrije.

On the other side of Kosovo, a woman in her fifties is walking miles to get pick different plants. Ava Veliji from the village of Mushnikove in Prizren together with her husband have been producing about 10 types of tea for ten years now.

She also makes different juices from raspberries, blueberries, blackberries.

"Initially, health is the reason that pushed us to deal with this work, as well as because of the people who seek these teas, people who suffer from various diseases, who use them for various diseases, such as diabetes, blood fat, blood pressure, etc. So, for all diseases there are plants in our mountain. So, for this reason we love the work we do, picking these plants. So that people can recover from diseases, recover in a natural way", says the woman in her fifties.

The Bosniak woman knows well almost every plant found in the mountain, so she also talks about the effects of tea, and the reasons why people want to consume it.

"So, people who suffer from various diseases such as from blood pressure, diabetes, come to us. They come and ask for herbal tea, but there are also people who buy it just for fun, they simply use it as organic tea because they don't prefer artificial tea that is sold in markets, but they simply want to use organic tea, since the quality of organic tea is not compared to those of markets. For example, we use hawthorn tea for blood pressure, mint tea is also good because it is pure and obtained from nature. People are also very happy to use the tea. But our problem is that we have nowhere to store them. We need a freezer with a capacity of 200 to 500 liters, so we have no place to store them", she tells KosovaPress.

Despite her desire to deal with nature's plants, she shows that as a woman she is encountering difficulties.

"It is very difficult for a woman. I can't climb the mountain so easily, it's difficult, it’s 15 km from here to the mountain. Whereas, once you’re there, it is not difficult to pick the plants, but the road until you get there is difficult", she adds.

The different types of tea produced by Ava from the village of Mushnikove, she says, are already being sold and ordered abroad.

Ava Veliji shows that they do not have special spaces for drying and collecting plants. She and her husband, Ismet, are now alone in this business. She also shows that they own a hectare of land and want to plant different plants, which would provide employment for many residents of the village.

"We don't have a place or machines for drying plants, so that we can oick even more plants. We have the desire and the will, but there are only two of us, me and my husband, we would like to hire some more workers so that this business can expand and then we can pack the product, and finally sell these natural teas to stores. We do not have these possibilities, no one has helped us", she concludes.

Since the pandemic, Sladjana Nikolic has also been working intensively in a village in Kamenica. She is engaged in the production of nettles in a plantation of 60 acres of land.

She named her company "Liostep", whose primary focus is the cultivation of nettles and its processing.

"We planted nettle plantations during the pandemic, we were without obligations, but before that we had plantations, we still have raspberry plantations, walnut plantations, so it started more as a hobby and now it has become a business. We have two plantations, one plantation is in Berivojc and one plantation is here at the exit from Kamenica, in Berivojc it is 10 acres, and this other one is bigger, it is 50 acres", Nikolic tells KosovaPress.

By collecting nettles, Sladjana, who is a Kosovo Serb, processes them and produces capsule tea. In the beginning, she worked all of these by hand, while now she has machines.

"Their medicinal qualities are generally known, the qualities of nettle as a plant. People have always used it, however, it is used fresh, while there are also people who use it to make tea, to make pies, it is not available all year round. Thus, packed in capsules, it will be available throughout the year and it is recommended to people who have problems with anemia, urinary tract, and allergies. In general, people who care about their health, vegans, for example, athletes, children who have health problems", she says.

After picking the nettles, the lyophilization process begins where they are dried at low temperatures. Sladjana then packs them into bags, where they are then turned into powder with the help of certain machines. She shows that the tea capsules she is producing has an effect on the treating of certain diseases.

Despite the great work, Nikolic says that she is facing financial problems and protracted procedures for certification.

"We have had no help from the institutions, even though we have not asked for help from the ministry or anything similar, the only thing is that we are in the process of certification at the Ministry of Organic Production and we are waiting for the certificate... (20:05) Yes, these are essentially bureaucratic procedures, permits, certificates, it would be good if we had a facility with a larger capacity, because we did not think that there will be so much demand for these capsules of ours. But at the fair and in general on the Internet there is a great demand, and I don't know how much we will be able to respond to the requests, of course we are planning to expand if this demand trend continues. This is the only problem, that for example Kamenica does not have an industrial zone where we could have all the infrastructure, where we would build a facility and develop our business, but it is all private property", she continues.

Kadrija, Ava, and Sladjana seek institutional support to strengthen their businesses. They say that assistance with machines and holding more frequent fairs would help their work resonate everywhere.

This article was realized within the project “Promoting women's businesses that produce healthy foods" , implemented by the Center for Innovation and Development/CFID and funded by Slovak Agency for International Development Cooperation/SlovakAid.