Raising chickens in the vineyard: a win-win for both farming and income

The midday sun baked the scorched earth. On both sides of Qian Linghua's vineyard, many weeds had withered and died, unable to withstand the heat. Inside the vineyard greenhouse, the temperature headed straight for 50°C, and large beads of sweat ran down her neck, soaking through her back... She said with a smile, "Working in this greenhouse, two farmers together can't keep up with me!" This woman, who grew up in the city and was laid off from an enterprise in middle age, chose to put down roots in the countryside after passing the age of 50, using her demolition resettlement compensation to contract a grape plantation, dreaming of selling her organic produce all over the country.

Qian Linghua was formerly an employee of Nanjing Construction Engineering Machinery Factory and was laid off from the enterprise more than ten years ago. A few years ago, she learned that the Nanjing Federation of Trade Unions could help with starting a business, so she went to the charity assistance market under the municipal federation and expressed her wish to learn chicken-raising techniques. The charity assistance market contacted charity assistance volunteer Han Xiulan, the "queen" of free-range mountain chickens, who let her intern raising chickens for free.

"Han Xiulan is truly a good person. She gave me 1,000 chickens for free. If they died, it was on her; if they lived, they were all mine. Not only that, she taught me for free how to build a chicken shed, how to mix chicken feed, and how to give the chickens injections." Under Han Xiulan's careful guidance, Qian Linghua's chickens grew beautifully. Unfortunately, however, avian influenza broke out that year, and live poultry suddenly had no market, so she had to find another way out.

Later, she found a job as a kindergarten childcare worker and did it for several years. At the kindergarten, she found that the children all loved eating grapes, but the grapes on the market varied greatly in quality, and sometimes they could not be washed clean, so she also worried about pesticide residues. So she once again had the idea of growing grapes: if she was going to grow them, she would grow grapes that were both delicious and safe to eat.

For her, who had grown up in the city, growing grapes was a completely unfamiliar skill that had to be learned from scratch. Speaking of the experience, it was truly full of hardships. "At first, I watched CCTV's 'Road to Wealth' every day and learned along with the program. I felt that a teacher surnamed Cai from a Shandong research institute taught grape-growing techniques especially well, so I made a special trip to Shandong, found this Teacher Cai, and asked him about the key technical points." But she could not understand a single thing in Teacher Cai's lessons, and she was so anxious that tears fell. At her wit's end, she returned to Nanjing. Later, through a friend's introduction, she took a master in Pancheng and respectfully sought his guidance, and the master also taught her everything he knew. After a year of study, she felt she had learned about enough, so she wanted to contract an orchard and begin practical planting.

But contracting an orchard required a large amount of capital, which was a heavy burden for her family. Just then, her old family house happened to be demolished, and she received a compensation payment. "At first, when she proposed using the demolition compensation to grow grapes, I thought it was too risky and did not agree. We argued several times, but in the end I still could not talk her out of it," said Ding Nanting, Qian Linghua's husband.

And so, Qian Linghua and her husband "burned their boats," took out the house demolition compensation, and rented nearly 50 mu of vineyard in the Donggou Circular Agriculture Park in Luhe District.

In the blink of an eye, 3 years passed. Grapevines only bear fruit in the 3rd year. During these 3 years, each year had different planting know-how. "The fertility grapes need is different every year: in the first year, bean cake fertilizer; in the second year, chicken manure fertilizer; in the third year, sheep manure fertilizer..." When talking about growing techniques, Qian Linghua spoke fluently. "I also specially bought biological bacterial fertilizer from Beijing. With this kind of fertilizer, the grapes are less prone to disease and do not need pesticide spraying."

By last year, the grapes began to bear fruit on a small scale, and she started raising chickens in the greenhouse again. 300 chicks were raised free-range inside the shed, usually eating weeds and grapes that fell from the vines. Because she had specially studied chicken-raising techniques, the survival rate of the first batch of chicks reached 95%, and local farmers all praised her, saying she was "better than people who have raised chickens for decades." The free-range "vineyard chickens" sold especially well. This year, she expanded the number raised to 600 and planned to launch the brand "Auntie Qian's Vineyard Chickens" to expand the organic produce chain.

This year was the first time Qian Linghua's vineyard bore fruit on a large scale, and output suddenly reached 100,000 jin. But when the orchard first opened at the end of June, because organically grown grapes are not treated with swelling agents or coloring agents, their appearance and color were not attractive, and fruit dealers refused to buy them. Seeing other people's grapes being hauled away cart after cart, while she neither understood sales nor had market channels and could only rely on repeat customers buying a little at a time, she felt both disappointed and anxious, and could not help crying.

"Even when the summer floods drowned nearly half the grapevines, you got through it. This time you will definitely find a way too!" Ding Nanting encouraged her. After Zhang Shangmin, head of the municipal federation of trade unions' charity assistance market, heard about this, he personally went to Luhe, tasted the grapes they had grown, and confirmed that the quality was indeed worth recommending, so he approached the media, hoping to help this plain and lovable woman who stands on her own two feet through the power of the press. When talking about sales considerations, Qian Linghua still kept her plain nature. "We are not thinking about money first. We are building word of mouth. Right now we rely on repeat customers to sell. Many people who have bought here will come back to buy again. I have confidence in the quality of the grapes."