(Baonghean.vn) -Every time Tet comes, it is also an opportunity for members of the Youth Volunteer Force and Construction Teams to bring to the market products bearing the Youth Volunteer Force "brand", not only Shan snow tea, squash, taro, black chicken, black pig but also lilies, oranges, lemons, and roots of incense....

On the eve of the Lunar New Year of Nham Thin, in the freezing cold of the mountainous weather, we followed the Nghe An Economic Construction Command to visit production team No. 2 of the Ro River Youth Establishment Village (5th Youth Volunteer Team of Nghe An Construction) stationed in the area of ​​Thanh Ha and Thanh Thuy communes (Thanh Chuong).

From the headquarters of the team to the Duom stream area - where 50 households of production team No. 2 reclaimed land to start a business, it took 10 kilometers. Life here is still difficult, there is no electricity grid, water must be brought from the stream, when it rains the road is muddy, but everyone's garden is full of clusters of oranges, bright yellow oranges and lemons, bright red tangerines and kumquats, tea hills with fragrant roots stretching endlessly. Every household's barn has five or seven buffaloes, dozens to hundreds of chickens... In the drizzling spring rain, the captain of production team No. 2 Nguyen Huu Van and his wife - originally from Do Luong (one of the first households to reclaim land) are harvesting the last batch of oranges to serve Tet. Huong Son oranges have large, thin-skinned, juicy, and delicious fruits. Stopping to pick ripe oranges to serve guests, Mr. Van happily said: This is the third season, oranges always have a good price during Tet. Last year's Tet holiday alone, the selling price was from 70 to 90 thousand VND/kg, and the income from oranges was about 30 million VND. In the 3-hectare garden that the couple has worked hard to build for the past 10 years, in addition to more than 100 tangerine and lemon trees, there are also 20 Phuc Trach grapefruit trees, dozens of Vietnamese grapefruit trees, 30 kumquat trees, 2 hectares of tea in which there are mixed roots of incense, 7 buffaloes, 60-70 chickens... for an average annual income of 60-70 million VND.

Leading us to visit the farms, the Captain of the 5th Youth Volunteer Team, Hoang Van Dong, said: Because it is adjacent to Huong Son district (Ha Tinh), the soil in Khe Duom is very suitable for growing oranges, especially the Bu orange variety, so there are up to 40/50 households in team 2 growing this orange variety with an area of ​​about 30 hectares, on average each year bringing to the market about 30 tons of Bu oranges and lemon oranges during Tet. Among them, many households earn 50-60 million VND from Tet oranges each year, such as the households of Tran Anh Tuan and Tran Van Nho... That is not to mention the income from selling tangerines, kumquats, and incense roots to make Tet incense.

Thanks to the effective development of the agroforestry model, the once-deserted Song Ro Youth Volunteer Village has now become a fertile land. In addition to the main crop of tea with about 1,800 tons of fresh tea buds per year, the Youth Volunteer Team 5 also has about 300 hectares of raw acacia, 25-30 hectares of high-yield cassava, 20 hectares of Dien Truc bamboo, 10-15 hectares of incense roots, 450 thousand buffaloes and cows, nearly 3 thousand chickens raised on hills, and 15 hectares of fish ponds. In addition, the model of growing Phuc Trach oranges and grapefruits has been developed... so the lives of 50 families of team members in 3 production teams are relatively stable (70% of households have an income of 50 million or more, 30% have an income of 30-50 million per year).

The weather was harsh but the atmosphere of welcoming Spring in the headquarters was very happy and warm because from labor products such as oranges, hill chickens, and incense roots, the families of the team members here had prepared a warm and full Tet.

In the Youth Volunteer Team 8 in Huoi Tu and the Youth Establishment Village in Na Ngoi - Ky Son, the place is not only famous for its delicious Tuyet Shan tea brand but also known for its Lily flower - a new flower served during Tet. This year, in addition to supplying more than 30 thousand vegetable seedlings of all kinds for the Mong people to grow themselves, the team members in the Na Ngoi Youth Volunteer Village also planted more than 16 thousand Lily flowers and raised more than 2 thousand black chickens. A few years ago, during Tet, the team members in the village had to bring Lily flowers from Ky Son to Vinh for consumption, but now traders come to the place to consume the products. Flowers grown in Na Ngoi and Huoi Tu are beautiful, have many buds, strong branches, and are popular with many people, so during Tet there are often not enough flowers to sell. Mr. Nguyen Trong Canh (Commander of the Youth Volunteer Team 8, Director of the Management Board of Na Ngoi Youth Volunteer Village) happily boasted: this year the weather is not favorable, but the team members have planted 50/50 hectares of Tuyet Shan tea, reaching 100% of the plan, and have nurtured 600,000 tea pots, bringing the total area to 450 hectares, with an output of 90 tons in 2011, worth 540 million VND. The exciting thing is that in Na Ngoi commune alone, up to now, 100 households in the commune have planted 120 hectares of Tuyet Shan tea. Lily flowers also won big with 26,000 plants (Huoi Tu 10,000, Na Ngoi 16,000). The price of lilies sold on the spot during Tet last year was 30,000 VND/plant, this year it increased to 36,000 VND, with an estimated income of over 800 million VND. Black chicken alone has an average price of about 140-150,000 VND/kg.

Not only knowing how to raise livestock, grow tea, grow rice and produce vegetables for sale, the members of the 8th Youth Volunteer Team and the Na Ngoi Youth Volunteer Village are also propagandists to promote science and technology for the villagers to learn. With the dedicated guidance of the team members, the Youth Volunteers-Building and Construction, the ethnic people in Huoi Tu and Na Ngoi have developed many models of hunger eradication and poverty reduction such as growing rice, raising Laisind cows, black chickens, black pigs, expanding the area of ​​growing taro, squash, ginger... and vegetables.

Huoi Tu, Na Ngoi has been and is becoming a bright spot in the new rural construction of Ky Son land. The Chairman of Na Ngoi - Lau Va Chong commune said: "The life of our Mong people is now much different from the past. Tet is also more fulfilling. Thank you to the team for bringing Tuyet Shan tea trees, Lily flowers, and warmth to our villagers...."

Khanh Ly