Tar-Makers’ Farmstead in Łosie

The Tar-Makers’ Farmstead (Zagroda Maziarska) is a branch of the Karwacjan and Gładysz Manor Houses Museum in Gorlice – a small open-air museum in the Lemko village of Łosie in the Low Beskids. It tells the story of an unusual trade that kept this village going for centuries: "maziarstwo", the travelling trade in axle grease and lubricants.

At first the people of Łosie sold "kołomaź", a grease for the wooden axles of carts made by dry distillation of pine waste. From the mid-19th century, as the oil industry developed in Subcarpathia, the tar-makers switched to technical lubricants and petroleum oils. Until the Second World War this was the main income for most men in the village. Every spring specially fitted wagons left Łosie for Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary and as far as Transylvania; the routes changed with the political borders. In 1934, 335 tar wagons set out. After the resettlements of Operation Vistula the trade collapsed: a few dozen tar-makers carried on in the post-war years, and the last one set off in the 1970s. The travelling trade also changed the village itself – its architecture, dress and way of life.

The farmstead opened on 31 October 2009. It is a genuine Lemko homestead in its original place (in situ), next to early-20th-century buildings and a working Greek Catholic church from 1810.

What to see

• An 1899 chyzha (Lemko house), a barn and a granary – the core buildings; the only relocated building is a 1928 chyzha from Bartne.
• The permanent exhibition on the tar trade set against the culture of Western Lemkivshchyna – objects, maps, photographs and panels; it also covers other non-farming trades such as spoon-making and birch-tar production. It was designed by the ethnographer Maria Brylak-Załuska.
• Original tar wagons in the farm building, including the wagon of Dymitr Karel, one of the last tar traders of Łosie.
• "Relics" in the granary – surviving elements of several dismantled Lemko churches, mainly 18th- and 19th-century crosses.

The farmstead also looks after a second branch – the Greek Catholic church of Saints Cosmas and Damian in nearby Bartne, which can be visited after phoning the parish in advance. Both sites are covered by one combined ticket, so a half-day trip through the Lemko villages near Gorlice is easy to plan: the farmstead, the Bartne church and, on the way, other wooden churches of the area.

Practical information

Łosie lies a few kilometres south of Gorlice, in the valley above the Klimkówka reservoir; driving is the easiest way to get there. The farmstead is open all year except Mondays (and in winter also Sundays); a standard ticket costs 12 zł, and a combined ticket with the Bartne church or the museum gallery in Gorlice is valid for seven days (all details in the "At a glance" box). A visit takes 30–45 minutes. The grounds are small and grassy, and the buildings have thresholds. Children love the huge canvas-covered wagons – real 19th-century "lorries". Before you go, especially in winter or on holidays, check the schedule on the Gorlice museum's website.

Nearby: trails and peaks

Our Flasza – Klimkówka Zapora route passes 1.5 km from the farmstead, and a little further runs the longer Gorlice – Jamnica. After a walk, take a look at Klimkówka Reservoir (Lake Klimkówka) and drive on to the Church of St Michael the Archangel in Brunary. Another branch of the same museum, with a joint ticket, is the Church Museum of Saints Cosmas and Damian in Bartne with its 18th-century iconostasis.

Official website: muzeum.gorlice.pl

Photos: mik Krakow, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.