Farmers go to the forest to pick blackberries and sell them for millions.

(Baonghean.vn) - Taking advantage of the ripe wild sim season, these days, people in My Thanh commune, Yen Thanh district have not hesitated to go up the hillsides to pick 'heavenly gifts' to sell, bringing in a good income.

Taking advantage of the summer break, for many months now, Nguyen Van Ha in hamlet 9, My Thanh commune and his friends in the village have been carrying baskets up to Tu Va mountain to pick wild blackberries.

Taking advantage of the summer break, Nguyen Van Ha in My Thanh commune (Yen Thanh) went to the hill to pick blackberries to earn more money to buy books and pay school fees. Photo: Phan Hien

Nguyen Van Ha in Hamlet 9, My Thanh Commune said that every day he and his mother pick nearly 20kg of sim, currently the price is 12,000 - 13,000 VND/kg. Since the beginning of the sim season, he has saved up millions of dong, which he uses to buy books and school supplies to prepare for the new school year.

Ms. Phan Thi Sam - one of the veterans in the wild sim picking profession in My Thanh commune is selecting sim to import. Photo: Anh Tuan

In previous years, Ms. Phan Thi Sam in My Thanh commune had to bring wild sim to the market to sell, but this year, there are buyers at her house. Therefore, every day, regardless of rain or shine, she still diligently goes through the cajuput and pine forests in neighboring communes to collect sim.

"Every day, around 5am we go to the forest to pick sim and return around 11am, in the afternoon from 2pm we go again until 5pm to buy for traders in the village. At the beginning of the season, the price of sim is about 20,000 VND/kg, because at that time sim is just ripe and few people go to pick it. During the peak season, there are even students on summer break who go to pick it to earn extra income for their families, so the selling price is lower, ranging from 12,000 - 15,000 VND/kg. Although the job of picking sim is hard, having to climb from hill to hill, but in the countryside, this extra income is very valuable" - Ms. Phan Thi Sam shared.

On days with favorable weather, Nguyen Van Ha and his mother can pick about 20kg of sim, earning about 260,000 VND/day. Photo by Phan Hien

In previous years, during the wild sim season, only a few people went to collect and sell them at the markets to earn some extra money or exchange them for vegetables or fish. But this year, due to favorable output, the wild sim collection movement in My Thanh has become very bustling, attracting people of all ages to participate.

These days, Ms. Phan Lan Phuong's house in Hamlet 5 is always crowded with people coming to import and receive the job of picking wild sim. Looking at the shopping diary she recorded, every day there are dozens of people coming to import sim, some as little as five or seven kilograms, others as much as several dozen kilograms. Since the beginning of the season, she has purchased more than 1 ton of sim for local people.

In addition to picking blackberries, taking advantage of the time to pick blackberry ears also brings in an extra income of 50,000 VND/kilo. Photo: Anh Tuan

Ms. Phan Lan Phuong said: Through reading books and newspapers, I saw the benefits of sim fruit, and then friends from many places asked, while the amount of sim in the markets was less, so I opened a purchasing point. Through social networking sites, to introduce the benefits of sim, many people were interested, so the number of sales increased. However, there were many days when students went to pick sim in winter and got a lot of sim, so they couldn't sell it all, so I researched and processed it to make sim honey, soaked sim in wine and sent it to friends to try. Now many people know about the product, so there are many orders, I have to hire people to help with the processing to have enough supply.

It is known that many households in Yen Thanh receive forest land to grow raw materials, sim trees are often located right under the canopy. During the ripening season, no one picks them, they fall to the ground, go up the trees and so the sim trees grow more and more.

Wild blackberry fruit has a sweet, astringent taste and many health benefits, especially in treating blood deficiency, hemoptysis, nosebleeds, hernias, tinnitus, spermatorrhea... Photo: Phan Hien

Anh Tuan - Phan Hien