LOCAL COMMUNITY

Location

     The municipality Sveti Nikole is situated in the central part of Republic Macedonia among these municipalities: Veles, Lozovo, Stip, Karbinci, Probistip, Kratovo, Orasac and Petrovec. Its territory occupies the Ovce Pole region. Ovce Pole is a valley which is situated in the flow of Sveti Nikole's River, as a right tributary of the river Bregalnica, 41052, north latitude broadness and 19022, north latitude length, eastern of Grinich.

Surface and population

     According to the 1994 census, the municipality Sveti Nikole occupies territory of 480 km2, where 18.487 inhabitants live, or 38,5 inhabitants per km2. The most inhabited is the administrative center Sveti Nikole with 13.280 inhabitants and the rest of the population or 5.207 inhabitants live in 31 villages. Disposition of the inhabitants is not equal. The number of the inhabitants is from several people to over 800 inhabitants in the bigger villages.
     In the municipality Sveti Nikole live mostly Macedonian, then Vlachs, Roman, Turkish, Serbian and others.

Climate conditions

     The Ovce Pole valley is characterized with hot summers, temperately cold winters, periodically extremely low and high temperatures, extreme variation of temperatures, where the autumn is hotter then the spring. There are some high temperatures registered reaching 440C and the low temperatures reac -230C.
     Strong winds from the north-west, north, south-east are specific for this region. They blow during the whole year.
     The Ovce Pole valley is a part of the areas with small rain quantities per year and it is characterized by frequent drought periods. The yearly average of rain quantities is 400-500 ml/m2.

Geographic characteristics and hydrography

     The Ovce Pole valley is wavelike hilled towards Vardar and Skopje's valley. The average high latitude is 200-400 m, and the highest place is Guriste, with 856 m hight latitude. This valley is mostly forestless and waterless.
     According to the hydrological aspect, the Ovce Pole valley belongs to the flow of the river Bregalnica. The highest water flow has Sveti Nikole's River. It consists of tree smaller rivers: Mavrovica, Karatas (Black Stone) and Peris. These three rivers connect each other in the middle part of this valley and continue to flow in a meridian direction as Sveti Nikole's River.
     Sveti Nikole's River and its tributaries are characterized as fast rivers. Larger and trouble water flows are characteristic in springs, after the melting of the snow and during the downpours.
      The small Ovce Pole's rivers drain during the summer because of the great evaporation and decreasing of the rains during the period of 30 years ago.
     In the region Alin Dol of the river Mavrovica, in 1981, an acumulation was built. Its water is used for water supplying of Sveti Nikole.

Economy

     The population is mostly occupied with agriculture, food and textile industry and industry of building materials. The food industry is represented by the meat industry, industry for fruit and vegetable conservation, baker industry, milk industry, industry for dried vegetable, industry for tobacco fermentation and industry for forage. This means that the process of agricultural production is fully completed. The most represented agricultural cultures: cereals, industrial and early gardened cultures and wine. The stock fund is represented by: sheep raising, cattle breeding, pig raising, poultry and bee-keeping.

Structure of agricultural areas

      The total agricultural territory of municipality Sveti Nikole covers 44.278 ha. Cultivation area covers 24.360 ha or 55%, pastures cover 13.904 ha or 31.4% and forests cover only 6.014 ha or 13.6%. The very specific characteristic for this region are the salt soils which cover 1150 ha.
     The most implicated agro-irrigative measures are: the irrigation system "Bregalnica" (in the south part), field-protective zones and channel for drainage of the salt soils, in the south-eastern part of the valley.

Historical review

     Sveti Nikole, as the central place of the Ovce Pole region, dates from the antic period. At the begging, it was located on the north-east part of the church St. Stephan. Because of the marshing land and unhealthy living conditions in this region at the end of the III century BC this area was deslocated on the right side of Sveti Nikole's River in the regions of Rudina, Sveti Spas and Recko Maalo. The possible antic name for this region was Probaton. In the VIIth century AD it changed its name in Ovce Pole. In the written recourses from the middle-century period Ovce Pole was populated area (fortress) and more widely as a region it was mentioned in the XIII century for the first time. In 1246, the Nikkei army, conquered Ovce Pole as well as all the other places in Macedonia.
Some years later (1255) the Nikkei Conqueror Teodor Lascaris went with his army to Strumica, through Ovce Pole, after the Veles garrison gave its army up to Lascaris. V. Mosin mentiones Ovce Pole's fortress as the one which was conquered by Lascaris.
     In 1282, the Serbian king Milutin (1282-1321) conquered Ovce Pole together with Polog, Skopje, Zletovo and Pijanec.
     In 1292, the church dedicated to the saint St. Nikolaj was built, in the same region which is still cold Ovce Pole.
     The legend about the miracle healing of Stephan Decanski is connected with this church.
Sveti Nikole was mentioned also by the Dejanovci brothers in 1378 which was confirmed by the gifts in the monastery St. Pantelejmon in Sveta Gora.
     In the sixties of XVII century AD, the Turkish writer of travel books Evlija Celebi was in Sveti Nikole twice.
      The name of Sveti Nikole was developed through the centuries. At the beginning this area was called Probaton. It was replaced with Sveti Nikole, when the church St. Nikola was built in Ovce Pole, in the VII century AD. The settlement had two names during the Turkish occupation. The first was Sveti Nikole for Christian (Macedonian) inhabitants and the other one was Klisali for the Turkish.
In the first half of the XIX century AD, in 1845, Sveti Nikole had a buying day and became a small city. The trade of cereals and stock was developed and the number of population began to grow, so in 1900, it had around 2500 inhabitants.
       Sveti Nikole had agricultural-handcraft function between two world wars. Today this function is changed with the development of other activities.

Archeological researches

     The Ovce Pole valley was inhabited since the ancient -history, actually from the Neolith period, which is confirmed with the archeological researches. The different kinds of things, which are evidence for the Neolith culture, are discovered in these locations, for now: Barutnica (Amzibegovo), Rug Bair (Gorobinci) and Alin Dol (Nemanjici). There are indicators that near the river flows in the antic period there were bigger settlements (cities), as Bilazora, Almana and others.
The oldest inhabitants in these areas were Peonies, who were inhabited by the river Aksij (Vardar) and Strimon (Struma).

Local self-government and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)

     The local self-government of municipality Sveti Nikole consists of Mayor and Members of the Municipality Council, and the representatives of the regional unions from the appropriate ministries, state funds, public enterprises and other institutions.
     In the municipality Sveti Nikole there is a strong non-governmental movement which emphases more fields of work: protection of the environment, women rights, human rights, scout activities, youth and sports, agricultural questions and others.
     The most successful NGOs are: EA "Izgrev", Scout Group "Goce Delcev", Municipal organization of women, Association of self-supporting mother's "Mother", Roma association, Association of agricultural producers, Association of cattle-breeders, Association of bee-keepers "Polen" and others.
During the realization of their programme activities they always get support and participation of the representatives from the local self-government and business sector.

Ecological priorities

     The citizens of municipality Sveti Nikole, coordinated by the members of the EA "Izgrev", prepared Local Ecological Action Plan for municipality Sveti Nikole, where they identified the ecological priorities:

• Quantity and quality of water drinking;
• Pollution of Sveti Nikole's River;
• Food quality from plant and animal origin;
• Lack of wood fund and
• Deposition of solid waste.

     As a common priority for all these priorities is a lack of public awareness. LEAP offers solutions for the ecological priorities, by involvement of the whole community, which will give realistic, visible and sustainable improvements of the environmental condition.