Nghe An farmers bring 'forest blessings' to their home gardens

"Forest Gifts" Harvest Season

From 6am, many people, mainly children and women from Hung Nghia, Hung Thanh, Xuan Lam communes... (Hung Nguyen) brought buckets and basins to Nhon hill.picking blackberries.

It is the peak season, so in just 3 hours, each person can pick 3-5kg of sim, with the early season price of 35,000 VND/kg, each day also has an income of about 100,000 - 150,000 VND/person, the whole sim season lasts from June to October of the lunar calendar, some households earn millions.

In the ripe blackberry season, people everywhere flock to pick "forest blessings". Photo: Thanh Phuc

Ms. Nguyen Thi Tho, a resident of Xuan Lam commune, said: "Taking advantage of the free time when the sim fruit is ripe, my mother and I go picking sim fruit. Mainly in the Nhon and Thanh areas. Being diligent and hard-working, the mother and daughter earn a few hundred thousand dong each day."

According to Ms. Tho, a person with "seniority" in the profession of picking wild sim, if you want to pick a lot of sim, you have to go early, and work hard to climb into steep cliffs where sim grows thickly. If you go late, the person who went before will have picked all of them, and you "pick" them, you will only get a few kilos. In addition, when picking, you also pay attention to the green, unripe fruits, "guessing" when the sim is ripe enough to pick. Therefore, when picking sim together, some people earn hundreds of dong per day, while others only earn tens of dong.

If diligent, each session, a person can pick 3-5kg of sim, selling for 100,000 - 150,000 VND. Photo: Thanh Phuc

My Thanh Commune (Yen Thanh) has 100 hectares of sim growing naturally on the hillsides. At this time, people are also rushing to collect "forest gifts". After harvesting, sim is gathered and traders come to buy it. My Thanh sim ripens earlier than other places, so currently, the purchase price is high, from 30,000 VND - 35,000 VND/kg. Whatever is available, traders buy it all, and people immediately collect "fresh money" after each sim picking session.

This year, there was a lot of rain and sunshine, so the sim fruit was in season, the fruit was big, juicy and sweet, so it was easy to sell, the price was also higher than every year from 5,000 VND - 7,000 VND/kg. In many places, people even formed groups to pick sim on the hillsides in the commune, in the district and neighboring districts. The tools were just a small basket, a bag, a pair of bata shoes or army sandals to make it easier to climb the mountain to "practice the job". Wandering this hill, that mountain, the whole sim season, many families also earned tens of millions of VND.

Sim is picked, sorted, cleaned of ears and sold to traders. Photo: Dao Tho

Ms. Le Phuong Thuy, a sim buyer in Hoa Thanh commune (Yen Thanh) said: "Every day my facility buys up to a ton of sim. After buying sim, we import it to traders in Hanoi, and I heard they export it to China to make medicine. Recently, many people have been looking to buy sim to soak in wine to cure diseases, so the price of this fruit has gradually increased."

There are no specific statistics on the area of ​​sim trees in the province, but it can be affirmed that sim trees bring a significant source of income to many local people in the districts: Hung Nguyen, Nam Dan, Thanh Chuong, Do Luong, Anh Son, Yen Thanh, Quynh Luu, Que Phong...

BRINGING WILD SIM HOME TO PLANT IN THE HOME GARDEN

Sim is a fruit with many uses from the stem, roots, leaves, and fruit, so it has high economic value. Photo: Thanh Phuc

In the past, sim was just a “fun” fruit of the countryside, but now it has become a commodity, purchased by traders at high prices. Currently, in addition to direct purchase, wild sim is bought and sold through social networking sites at high prices.

The market demand increases, the price of sim is high, so the number of people looking to pick wild sim is also increasing, but because the natural forest land is increasingly narrowing, many hills are being converted to grow raw materials, so sim trees are gradually becoming scarce. On the other hand, in many places, people exploit sim in an "exterminate" way, which also causes sim trees to gradually be "erased". Faced with this situation, many people have had the initiative to bring sim trees to plant in their home gardens or under the forest canopy,enclosure and protection of sim trees.

Blackberry grown under the acacia canopy of Mr. Lam Van Hanh's household (Hamlet 3, Thanh Ha Commune, Thanh Chuong District) brings in an annual income of 30-40 million VND. Photo: Thanh Phuc

Mr. Lam Van Hanh (Hamlet 3, Thanh Ha Commune, Thanh Chuong District) has 3 hectares of forest garden land. When renovating 2 hectares of land to grow acacia, he did not cut down the sim trees but only cleared the wild plants. Therefore, under the acacia canopy, the sim trees still grow well, bearing many large, juicy fruits.

Each sim season, the family also earns 30-40 million VND. Sim trees grow wild, grow naturally and do not need care. It is a shrub so it does not affect the growth of acacia trees.

Mr. Lam Van Hanh - Hamlet 3, Thanh Ha Commune, Thanh Chuong.

Because of the effectiveness of the sim tree, Mr. Hanh planted more than 1,000 sim trees around his garden, both to create a landscape and to generate income. After 6 months of experimental planting, the sim trees began to take root and grow well.

From wild plants, sim is now cultivated and brought from the forest to be planted in home gardens. Photo: Thanh Phuc

Mr. Hoang Van Thuc - Vice Chairman of Thanh Ha Commune People's Committee (Thanh Chuong) said: "Previously, there were hundreds of sim trees on Thanh Ha land, but now most of them have been cut down, leaving only about ten hectares of hills with sim trees. From the method of Mr. Hanh's household, in the near future, the commune will expand the practice for people to enclose and protect sim trees under the forest canopy; households with large gardens will bring sim trees from the hill garden to plant in their home gardens, creating a commercial tree."

Dried sim is combined with lotus leaves, lotus rice and ginseng flowers to create a type of tea according to a folk recipe. Photo: Thanh Phuc

Sim is an easy-to-grow plant with many uses: Sim fruit can be eaten directly, soaked in wine, made into syrup, blended into smoothies; young sim leaves can be used to make sim tea, sim roots can be used as medicine, tree trunks can be used as firewood...

Currently, the price of sim is quite high, 25,000 VND - 40,000 VND/kg (depending on the time), so the profit for people is not small. With the advantage of a large mountainous area, therefore, if localities in the province have a plan to plan the sim growing area associated with care, protection, and reasonable exploitation of natural sim areas combined with the development of eco-tourism from sim (visiting sim flower hills; experiencing sim picking; processing products from sim fruit to sell to tourists) will fully exploit and improve the efficiency of sim trees, then this will be a "poverty reduction tree" for people in mountainous communes.