Ups and downs of Tet

(Baonghean) - Playing with peach blossoms has become a hobby of Vietnamese people during the traditional Tet holiday. To have those "spring gifts", peach growers must take care of them, cherish them, and peach traders must also work hard to find satisfactory peach branches.

Nam Anh (Nam Dan) is a vegetable growing commune, but only Hamlet 9 - the hamlet located at the foot of Dai Tue mountain - has the profession of growing flowers. Peach trees have been in this area for a long time, but in the past, peach trees grew naturally, and on Tet holiday, people cut off one or two branches to display. But in the past ten years, peach trees have started to have a high price, so the people of Hamlet 9 have learned to grow them for business as a commodity. And many people have become rich from this profession.

At the beginning of December, many peach trees in Hamlet 9 have begun to bud. Outsiders think that this is too early because Tet is still more than twenty days away, but Mr. Phan Van Toan, who has nearly ten years of experience growing peaches, affirms: The peach variety must bloom now so that it will bear fruit by Tet. Because from the beginning of December to Tet, peaches must bloom at least three times, the first batch of flowers will bear fruit. Thus, the Nam Anh peach branches will be full of leaves, flowers, and fruit. That is what peach players are looking for.

This year, Toan's family's peach garden has nearly 50 trees, the tallest of which is approximately two meters tall. Compared to growing other types of trees, growing peach trees uses less land, costs less because it doesn't require much fertilizer and is easy to care for, so each year just by planting "hay hay" in the home garden, one can earn millions. However, for peach trees to grow evenly and produce beautiful flowers, growers also need to have a lot of experience, as Toan said: "Peach trees have quite a lot of worms, especially stem borers, so we have to be careful not to let the worms develop. Especially during the season of dense foliage, usually from March to April, we have to strip the leaves. Peach trees with small branches that are not plump cannot produce large, beautiful flowers." To make it easier for customers to choose, this year, in addition to the traditional peach varieties of the region, Toan also brought peach varieties from Thanh Hoa to grow because Thanh Hoa peach trees are characterized by large flowers and a very beautiful bright pink color. However, to suit the Nghe people's taste for peach blossoms, he does not create a shape for the peach blossoms but lets them grow naturally. Usually, it takes 2 to 3 years of care for a peach tree to be ready for harvest, and a tree that grows well can grow 2 to 3 branches. From the second harvest season onwards, it only takes 1 year. A peach blossom branch sold in the garden can cost from 500,000 to 1 million VND. His family has never had to sell it because from the 15th to the 20th of Tet, peach blossom buyers come to the garden to place orders, and beautiful peach blossom branches are ordered several months in advance.

Peach garden of Mr. Toan's family in Nam Anh (Nam Dan).

Quite far from Toan's house is the peach garden of Phan Tat Duong's family. This is also the family with the longest experience in growing peaches in Nam Anh with nearly 100 peach trees, divided into two gardens. Duong said that he was previously given a peach tree by his grandfather in Quy Hop to plant for Tet for fun. Unexpectedly, the soil here is suitable for beautiful peaches, no different from those in the mountains. From the place where peaches were only used as gifts for relatives, he now has a rather impressive "property" of peaches for customers to choose from. In addition to the Vietnamese peach tree, in the past few years he has also traveled far and wide to find Laotian rock peach varieties to plant to please "connoisseur" customers. The Vietnamese peach tree blends with the rock peach in the garden, hoping that the weather will gradually warm up to show off its spring beauty and find the hands of those who know how to appreciate it.

According to Mr. Tran Van Nam - Head of the Agriculture Department of Nam Anh commune, the whole commune currently has about 150 households growing peaches. Depending on the circumstances, some grow a little, some grow a lot, but compared to peaches in other regions, peaches in Nam Anh are often "pure", easy to grow, and rarely have crop failures. Therefore, if a family only grows about a dozen peach trees, they will have a considerable amount of money during Tet. This is only a side job, not requiring much effort, so in recent years, people have spontaneously grown a lot and have increasingly affirmed their economic efficiency. Peach traders often choose Nam Anh peaches or other types of Vietnamese peaches that are abundant in Nghia Dan, Quynh Luu, and Quy Hop because they rarely suffer losses. Like last Tet, due to the prolonged cold weather, when wild peaches and rock peaches could not bloom, Vietnamese peach trees "reigned" because they had many leaves, buds, and flowers.

However, to talk about valuable peach trees, they must be wild peach trees, with characteristics of rough trunks and branches, natural shapes, large flowers, thick petals, and long-lasting, often found in Ky Son, even across to Laos, up to Sa Pa and the provinces of the Northwest. Experienced traders, if lucky enough to find a good product, just one peach tree can "earn forty times the capital". And wild peach trees must be mentioned in Nghi An (Nghi Loc), because two-thirds of the peaches that are present in the Vinh market near Tet are supplied by people from this region. Currently, more than half of the communes in this area are engaged in trading Lao peaches, the most in hamlet 3. There are also many "lucky" traders, such as Mr. Nhi, Mr. Truyen, Mr. Tuan, Mr. Khoa.

“Talking about peach trading, there are many happy and sad stories. But the most exciting ones are the trips to the Northwest or across the border to Laos to “hunt” for wild peaches. To prepare for a shipment, it takes at least a week and usually you have to go in groups to avoid danger” – Mr. Le Cuong, hamlet 3, Nghi An commune, one of the people with many years of experience traveling to Noong Het (Xieng Khouang - Laos) confided. Peach trading in each period also has different “difficulties”. In the past, there were still many peaches, so people only started to set off around the 20th of Tet. Peaches were easy to buy at that time, so people only took money for large peach branches, and they gave them away for free. However, at that time, the roads were difficult to travel on, and renting a car was also difficult, so not many people were interested. Now that the roads are open and the border crossing between the two countries is convenient, not only Nghe An peach traders but also traders in the northern provinces also go to Laos to find peaches. Therefore, to hunt for big, beautiful peach trees, people like Mr. Cuong have to go into remote villages, in some places "when seeing cars, the whole village comes out to see" to be lucky enough to find them. The price of a peach branch is not as cheap as before, and people have learned to "bargain", if you hesitate, someone else will "grab" it - Mr. Cuong continued. Peach trees in Laos are not sold by branch like in Vietnam, but are sold in bundles, the locals pay whatever price they set, there is no right to choose. Therefore, in a bundle of peach trees, sometimes there are only a few beautiful branches, the rest are unlucky and all you get are "firewood".

In 2012, Mr. Cuong could be considered lucky because he sold a peach branch for 45 million VND, but the whole Nghi An commune last year was a bad year and the loss was estimated at 5-7 billion VND - Mr. Dang Minh Ngan (Hamlet 3) said. The reason for this loss was because last year it was cold and the peach blossoms bloomed late. Many families spent tens of millions of VND buying peaches thinking that by Tet the peach blossoms would bloom, but close to Tet, the peaches were still as dry as logs. Even Mr. Ngan's three children, with many years of experience, only the eldest son "won" and the rest lost millions. The surprising thing is that although the peach blossom business is risky and depends on the weather, whether they won or lost last year, the people were not discouraged. In the new year, Nghi An people were excited again, pooling all their capital to continue selling peach blossoms. Students also take advantage of this time to go home to work extra, each peach branch sold can be paid from 50 - 100 thousand VND.

Thanks to the "hard work" with the spring flowers, peach blossoms sometimes do not disappoint. According to the locals, the highest record in Nghi An is a peach tree worth 60 million VND, sold by Mr. Nghinh to a "tycoon" in Vinh last year, and peach trees costing around 30-40 million VND are available every year. Long-time peach traders who have many beautiful and unique peach trees do not have to go to the flower market to sell, but as soon as the goods arrive, connoisseurs will automatically come looking for them. The pleasure of selling peach blossoms is finding a soul mate, for example, if the homeowner and the buyer are compatible and both are in love with the same peach blossom, even if they know the price is cheap, they will let it go. Or sometimes, knowing that the peach blossoms are beautiful and unique, but waiting forever, they still do not meet any customers. Whether it is happy or sad, peach growers and peach traders seem to have an "addiction" and consider it a way to enjoy spring. So, even though they have to "work hard" in the peach garden or "sleep on the streets" looking for peaches, they still feel optimistic and happy because they can bring spring to every home.

My Ha - Khanh Ly