The women in the vineyard are busy without pause
Women
Fu Fengling, member of the Luquan District Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Shijiazhuang and farmer entrepreneur.
Wu Fengzhu, member of the Luquan District Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and head of the Luquan Tianganquan Fruit and Vegetable Planting Professional Cooperative.
Hebei Phoenix Sanlu Fruit and Vegetable Ecological Park, the "grape kingdom," "rose sea" and "new, special and exotic vegetable base" jointly built by Fu Fengling and Wu Fengzhu, is a science and technology ecological organic picking demonstration park to which they devote all their energy as if caring for children.
Dark-skinned and capable Fu Fengling and honest and down-to-earth Wu Fengzhu are two women past the age of 40, but they have not been worn down by daily chores, family gossip, or looking after children and cooking. Instead, they have written a new chapter as heroines in the field of science and technology entrepreneurship. Fu Fengling, who is in charge of technology, traveled alone to Shandong to learn from experts in order to study new grape varieties. Through bitter cold and scorching heat, she stayed at a grape planting base for a full year, and finally brought new varieties and new technologies back to Shijiazhuang. She hit it off immediately with Wu Fengzhu, who had many years of management experience, and together they invested more than 3 million yuan to set up the Hebei Phoenix Sanlu Picking Park, covering 200 mu and equipped with 28 winter-warm greenhouses.
They do not speak of the hardships of starting a business, the difficulty of learning techniques, the heat of summer, or the cold of winter. When Fu Fengling and Wu Fengzhu first founded the picking park, they were already thinking of finding a way for the left-behind elderly and women in the village to become better off. Regardless of the tight funds in the early days of the business, from the very first day the park was established, every elderly person and woman who came to work for them could earn a daily wage ranging from 60 to 80 yuan. The park has work to do almost all year round, allowing people to increase their income by about 2,000 yuan per month without delaying their farm work, and before the Phoenix Sanlu Picking Park was founded, this was something the villagers who had no chance to go out and earn money would not even have dared to imagine.
Grapes
"Picking from March until the Spring Festival?"
"That's right, this year it still has to start in May. But by next year, as long as you come, I dare to let you eat fresh grapes at any time."
In Fu Fengling and Wu Fengzhu's picking park, from open ground to greenhouses, there are grapevines of every kind. Some have just put out new buds, some already have green leaves, some grape trellises are crowded with clusters of fruit, and some are just at the stage of "the little lotus showing its pointed tip," with each fruit still green and small...
These mainly introduced latest excellent varieties from Europe-Asia and Europe-America that are tolerant of transport and storage, under the careful tending of Fu Fengling and Wu Fengzhu, can be described as "gathering the spirit of the Taihang Mountains' foothills, collecting the essence of heaven and earth, absorbing the nutrients of nature, each one dewy, tender, green and with strong branches." Under the guidance of experts, they adopted organic agricultural product operating procedures for these grapes, which differ in maturity period, taste and characteristics. Not only do the grapes they grow taste good and have high sugar content, but more importantly, they let people eat with confidence and peace of mind. They also gave the grapes names of their own, calling them the Ganquanmi series grapes No. 1 to No. 8.
"The scientific name of Ganquanmi No. 1 is 'Flame.' Look, when her fruit colors, the pattern it presents is just like thick flames burning. Isn't that especially vivid?" "Unlike Ganquanmi No. 1, which is seedless and has a taste leaning toward cherry, Ganquanmi No. 2 is crisp like a winter jujube, with thin and crisp skin and a small seed inside. Right now is exactly its picking season." When talking about these grapes, whether it is Fu Fengling or Wu Fengzhu, both speak of them as if counting their family treasures.
Busy
If you want to sit down and chat with Fu Fengling and Wu Fengzhu, it can only be late at night when all is quiet. These two people, during the daytime, hardly have time to eat or drink. They are either busy receiving guests or out inviting experts and professors, learning techniques and management, and the books in the room about grape cultivation are piled as tall as a person.
But in the quiet depths of night, can you definitely find them? Last November, because of continuous overcast and snowy days, more than 20 greenhouses of an extremely late-maturing variety, "Ice Beauty" grapes, which had just been planted and were about to bear ripe fruit, fell ill one after another. Due to freezing damage, the grape plants were harmed, nutrients could not be supplied in time, and large patches of grapes turned yellow and began to fall. For several days and nights, the workers in the park could not necessarily find the two of them in time. Because the two of them stayed in one greenhouse after another and did not go out.
And to Fu Fengling and Wu Fengzhu, none of this is a big deal. When the roses in the park bloomed, they learned techniques and did publicity, viewed the sea of flowers and made fruit tea; when the novel vegetables in the park ripened, they took photos, invited experts, did WeChat business and organized picking; when it was again the season to plant peanuts in the park, they checked seeds and busied themselves with fertilizing. What the sun in the sky shone on was not their faces but their backs, yet what they always cared about was the land beneath their feet and the seedlings in their hands.