Shepherdess in the Deep Mountains Cracks the Whip to Help Farmers Strive for Moderate Prosperity

Gao Lancui herds sheep on the mountain.

“Sheep graze on the hillside, prosperity is in sight, good mountains, good waters, good scenery, driving the sheep toward moderate prosperity……” Recently, when this writer walked into Yanmen Group, Heshandu Village, Tianqiao Town, Fenggang County, a melodious and sweet song flew out from the mountainside, rippling through the depths of the mountains, revealing her joy at growing rich and striving for moderate prosperity by raising sheep. She is the one whom local cadres and villagers call the shepherdess, the lead goose who has guided her fellow villagers out of poverty toward prosperity——Gao Lancui.

In early 2014, after 35-year-old Gao Lancui and her husband Wang Chengqiang returned home from working elsewhere, they set their sights on the sheep-raising industry as the way to shake off poverty and grow rich in their hometown. They used the more than 200,000 yuan they had saved to build a standard breeding farm, a birthing room, an ammoniation silo and a biogas digester, rented 25 mu of land to plant ryegrass, sweet sorghum and high-mountain grass, taught themselves sheep disease prevention and epidemic control techniques, and bought breeding sheep for self-mating and self-breeding. Today, her family's total number of sheep has reached more than 120, and the income from selling lambs exceeds 50,000 yuan each year.

Successful sheep raising set them on the road to wealth, but they did not forget their neighbors in their prosperity. In order to help their neighbors escape poverty as soon as possible, she and her husband Wang Chengqiang went door to door to do persuasion work, urging everyone to raise sheep and develop crop cultivation. They also promised the sheep-raising households: “As long as everyone raises sheep, our family's breeding sheep will mate once for 80 yuan, vaccination injections once for 5 to 10 yuan, and assisting a ewe at birth once for 20 yuan, and teaching everyone sheep-raising techniques and disease prevention and epidemic control will not cost a single cent. At the same time, when selling lambs to everyone, we will charge one yuan less per jin.” Their actions strengthened the villagers' confidence and determination to raise sheep.

Under their leadership and support, in less than two years, 26 households joined in raising sheep, and the number of sheep raised reached more than 600. There were also beekeeping, cattle raising, pig raising and under-forest chicken raising. According to Gao Lancui, over the two years, her family provided goat mating, disease prevention and epidemic control and other services free of charge to sheep-raising households in the group and nearby, waiving fees for farming households amounting to 33,000 yuan. Today's Yanmen Group is filled everywhere with the calls of cattle and sheep, every household engages in farming and breeding, presenting a new scene of shaking off poverty, growing rich and striving for moderate prosperity.