“We say that our village is “The village of the hundred professors”. We are still looking for more”, says a professor living in Ekzarh Yosif. Since 1934 the name of the village reminds of the higher Bulgarian Orthodox cleric Joseph I, who has contributed greatly for preserving the unity of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and for the Bulgarian educational and church activity in Macedonia and Odrin, left in the Ottoman Empire after the liberation.
In fact, this village has existed for millennia and the reason for the eternal life in the region is the extremely fertile land. When Prof. Mitkov retired and decided to dedicate himself to his agricultural hobby, he did a survey about the quality of the soil in the region. It turned out that there is the best combination of atmospheric conditions and a generous black soil. Hail has last fallen in 1940 – the village is somehow protected and the harvest is always generous.