After 8 years of planting walnuts, she led the villagers onto a road to prosperity
Quotes from the people featured
Zhang Wenying, Party branch secretary of Yangjiahe Village, Zhuyang Town, Lingbao City
“Growing fruit trees takes a lot of energy and the fruit does not keep well, which is too much for the elderly, so the walnut tree is the best choice.”
Yangjiahe Village in Zhuyang Town, Lingbao City, a remote mountain village with an average altitude of more than 650 m, has once again welcomed a bumper walnut harvest this year. Whether in the mountains or in the village, when villagers meet, what they talk about most is walnuts, and what they think about most is also walnuts. The frequent rain since early summer has made the nuts on the trees plumper, and has also filled Zhang Wenying, the Party branch secretary of Yangjiahe Village, with longing.
She has a habit of writing in her diary every day. 10 years ago, when she had just taken up a post in the village committee, the per capita annual income recorded in her diary was only just over 6,000 yuan. 10 years later, it is expected to reach 15,000 yuan. The biggest driving force behind this is none other than the gradually expanding scale of the walnut industry.
Zhang Wenying's choice to plant walnuts back then was not a sudden impulse, but the result of careful consideration. At that time, the young people in the village had basically all gone out to work, and growing fruit trees required a great deal of effort, which was too much for the elderly in the village. Walnut trees, however, do not require too much energy and also keep well. After following the town government to other places to inspect walnut planting, in 2008 the village she led became the first in the whole town to "eat the crab", planting large areas of walnut trees.
Walnut trees bear fruit in five years. By 2012 and 2013, the walnut trees were bearing fruit on a large scale, and the villagers' wallets gradually bulged. From the initial more than 5,000 mu, it gradually grew to more than 6,700 mu. Last year, the whole village's walnut income was more than 1 million yuan, achieving a per capita income increase of 850 yuan. At the same time, Yangjiahe Village also cultivated and strengthened industries such as tobacco leaves, Chinese medicinal herbs and corn. This year, the villagers' per capita net income is expected to reach 15,000 yuan.
In 2013 and 2014, by securing projects, Zhang Wenying installed 45 streetlights for the village, planted 300 landscape trees, planted more than 10,000 winter jasmine and iris along the roads, encouraged the masses to raise funds to pave the lanes, and built a cultural fitness square, a badminton square and a basketball court.