BAC GIANG – Nong Chi Khiem, 32 years old, a former employee of a TV station owns 180 hectares of forest sims, giving an average annual income of about 4 billion VND.
In the afternoon of June, in the hot sun, Nong Chi Khiem and his wife took turns turning rice, peanuts and soybeans to expose the slope in front of the house. Unlike people in Tan Hiep commune, Yen The, who consider rice and maize as the main source of income, these agricultural products of Khiem family are only for food and livestock.
On the two sides of the house gate, rows of bonsai trees are still in bloom. Back in the garden, a young man with a Bachelor of Electronics and Telecommunications, a former employee of a TV station, planted 3,000 sim originals. On a hill not far from home, another 7,000 sim stumps started to exploit.
“This place has just been planted, so the output is not high. My main source of fruit is in the hometown, the mountains of Chi Lang, Lang Son. There I bid and bought about 180 hectares of forest land, which is a sim valley”, Khiem said and revealed the average annual income of several billion dong from the sim itself – the wild fruit seemed to be just for fun.
Few people know, there was a time Khiem was blind about the future. In 2014, his family’s health and health were not favorable, he decided to quit his job at a TV station and take his wife and children back to his hometown. They followed their mother-in-law to open a workshop to buy bamboo leaves for export, or to farm pigs, chickens, pigeons, and rabbits … But nothing was successful.
Khiem’s ”love” with my wild myrtle began four years ago. In Tet Thanh Minh that year, he returned to his hometown to commute. Engrossed in clearing the grass, setting up the offering tray, when he looked up, he was dizzy by the purple myrtle around him. This breed is associated with his childhood. Trees grow tightly on the field banks, but no one cuts them. When working in the fields, people are tired, people often sit under the canopy, snacking on fruit. “My parents told me that there were years of famine, people in Hiep Hoa came to the region of Chien Thang where I picked sims to eat instead of rice, and the hat picked white sim for the whole hill”, Khiem said.
The more this tree species in barren land, the stronger it is, the better it is not to worry about crop failure. Plants can be used as medicine, as an ornamental, and for cattle to eat. He remembered a trip to Phu Quoc earlier, where the sims were purchased for 75,000 VND per kg. Suddenly a strange idea flashed in Khiem’s mind.
Right that day, Khiem tried to contact the factories in Phu Quoc and was confirmed by them “buy as much as possible”. “There was a burning glow in me. I envisioned the way ahead very bright”, said Nong Chi Khiem.
Before he started, he read many documents. Information on sims is few, but blueberries are similar to sims with a wide variety of products. He shared that he had a plentiful source of trees and fruits on the import-export forums and medicinal association, and unexpectedly had hundreds of phone calls. Not only sim fruit, many people ask to buy roots, leaves and flowers.
With peace of mind about the output, the young man officially chose a sim tree to “change his life”.
In the summer of 2016, Khiem mobilized his family members to go to the forest to pick sims for sale. That year, he both exported to Phu Quoc and retailed about 35 tons, the average price of 35,000 VND per kg.
In the winter, Khiem and his wife go to the forest to find my 2-3 year old sim trees to plant. When the villagers saw him doing this, they said: “This guy does a terrible job”, “The forest sim cannot cut it all down and bring it back to plant.” The head wears a black hat.
But Khiem’s wife supports. Tran Thi Cham, 31 years old, said that in winter, the mountains are only about 8 degrees. From 5am, she sat behind her husband’s car into the woods. Hand holding the box of rice, sesame salt, dried food.
The North has two main varieties of sim, ordinary and sticky. Sticky rice with wrong results, big, more meat, less seeds, more fragrant. But in the forest, the proportion of sticky trees only accounts for about 30%. In winter, the tree has no fruit and can only be distinguished by leaves. There are times when they are engrossed in finding trees, lost for miles away. “Many times he was working, suddenly he looked up and met the eyes of the jungler or buffalo shepherd. He was afraid that he just wanted to scream but did not dare to scream,” he said of his greatest fear.
Humility is most haunted by cat caterpillars. Once he touched a worm as big as a thumb, his whole hand was deeply hairy. “I stood still, then trembled,” he recalls. At that time, Khiem just stopped working, called his wife to ask for the hair removal.
“The most annoying thing is touching something that is tingling. Holding the chopsticks to eat rice is also annoying. Bee stings are still swollen face still can not compare the discomfort due to deep hair”, Khiem shared.
Each day they find about 200 plants, or about a quintal. Khiem drove in the front, his wife sat on the tall tree behind. Many times uphill, the car picks up its head upside down, the couple falls off, each person flies in each direction. Going into the open road can easily turn the whole car into the field; the road is easy to derail. “One day, rolling down the field 7 m deep. We can’t lift the car for half an hour,” Khiem said.
Many days lost in the area with many sticky sim trees, the couple dug passionately in the evening. They transported out of the forest, continued to drive 70 km home to get the car to beat the trees. Done at 4am.
“Tired but greedy. Now I think about how the couple can do that,” she said. In total, they went into the forest for 50 trips during the three winter months of that year.
Digging any tree, the couple immediately planted that tree. For many months, Khiem dried the sun in the hills, and watered them four times a day to help the plants take root. Summer 2017, sim orchard started to produce the first fruits. This plant, once alive, does not need any further effects.
Since that year, Khiem organized the fruit collection in a methodical manner. He hired about 30 people from Na Cai, Na Tinh, Tinh Lung villages (Chien Thang commune, Chi Lang) to go to the forest to pick sims, earning about 50 tons. In 2019, Khiem bid for 150 hectares and bought more than 30 hectares of forest land, on which the sim of the forest was immense. This case he obtained more than 100 tons of fruit.
The sim harvest season usually takes place from the full moon in July to the full moon in August every year. Then comes the raspberry season (raspberry). Last year, Khiem started picking raspberries from his estate, selling 20 tons of fruit in total. Thanks to these two fruit seasons and the sale of myrtle seedlings, he and his wife earned 4 billion VND / year.
With an abundant raw material area, Khiem is cooperating with an agricultural official, planning to make more products such as sim starch, sim syrup this year, sim syrup …
Mr. Nguyen Van Dong, Head of Agriculture Department of Yen The District, said that his family was the first household in the area to grow a large-scale sim tree. This is a native plant. The successful model of Khiem’s family will give opportunities to expand throughout the area.