The cultivation experience of Liao Shiyuan, a specialized grape grower
Liao Shiyuan is a major grape grower in Group 5 of Qiaotou Village, Huarong Town. In 2000 he contracted 10 mu of land to grow grapes, and he has been growing them for 10 years now. This has changed his family's impoverished life and made him more confident and optimistic.
When he was young, Liao Shiyuan was spotted by a cadre recruiting soldiers and taken to the army, where he served in the air force. In the army he was an obedient and good soldier, and he always carried out the tasks assigned by his superiors to the letter. After being demobilized from the army, Liao Shiyuan returned to Qiaotou Village, Huarong Town. Facing fields of crops as far as the eye could see, he felt lost, not knowing how to walk the road ahead, and even less knowing which road suited him.
For a long time, Liao Shiyuan was caught between choosing and being chosen. After demobilization, although he was somewhat unwilling to stay in the village farming, he had no choice but to begin his farming life in the village like the other farmers.
When working away from home became common in rural areas, Liao Shiyuan went to the city to begin his life as a migrant worker. He worked as a laborer on construction sites, then as a repairman, and later, with the help of his wife's brother, he bought a motorized rickshaw and shuttled through the streets and alleys picking up and dropping off passengers. He lived this way for several years, and when the motorized rickshaws were banned, Liao Shiyuan was unemployed again. He faced both the confusion of having to choose a new path in life and the most basic pressure of survival, that of feeding and clothing his whole family, old and young. Whether to keep working in the city or go back to the countryside to farm, Liao Shiyuan could not make up his mind. For those few days, he could not eat or sleep well, once again facing the agony of choice. After repeated deliberation, Liao Shiyuan decided to go back to the countryside. The countryside was his root, and he believed that where there are roots, trees can surely grow, and surely give him a cool shade from the summer heat.
Not long after returning to the countryside, it happened that the government was supporting and helping farmers to grow grapes, readjusting and consolidating small, scattered plots of land, allowing farmers to contract large plots of land to grow grapes, and providing grape-growing households with policies benefiting farmers such as seedlings and low-interest loans. Liao Shiyuan found hope and a future in the government's farmer-benefiting policies, and he contracted 10 mu of land in one go. By this time, he already had 3 children, all of them in school, and the tuition for each semester was more than 1000 yuan. For him, this was a very large expense. Liao Shiyuan did not want to see his children drop out of school; no matter how hard or tiring it was for himself, he could not let his children suffer. Although he knew nothing about growing grapes, he still gritted his teeth, took out a loan of 10,000 yuan, and began the path of growing grapes.
From 2000 to 2003, the output value of Liao Shiyuan's vineyard was less than 1000 yuan per mu, and for a family already 30,000 yuan in debt, such an output value was far from enough to repay the loan. Especially in 2003, there was too much rain, and all the grape-growing households lost their harvest. In their grief, many farmers cut off the grape vines. Liao Shiyuan stood in his vineyard, his heart pierced as if by a knife. The grapes he had worked so hard to grow were gone just like that, and he did not know what to do in the days ahead. Whether to keep growing grapes or switch to other crops as soon as possible, Liao Shiyuan lay awake at night. After repeated mental struggle, he decided to keep growing grapes. Just then, the town government organized a group of grape-growing farmers to visit Jingshan to learn from others' cultivation techniques, and he signed up. In Jingshan, through explanations by relevant experts and by learning from others' growing experience, he introduced Jingshan's rain-shelter cultivation technique into his own vineyard. Combined with the experience he had gained through 3 years of exploration, Liao Shiyuan finally tasted the joy of harvest and considerable economic returns for the first time in 2004. In 2004 alone, his grape income multiplied several times over. Once the grapes became profitable, his self-confidence and investment capacity increased greatly. Growing grapes is also skilled and manual work. Although the labor intensity is not great, it takes time to tend them, especially when preventing disease, which requires early detection and early treatment so as not to lose the whole vineyard's grapes. This is how Liao Shiyuan kept learning and constantly summing up experience and lessons, slowly turning himself from someone who knew nothing about grapes into a specialized grape grower.
After 2004, his grape income grew year after year. In the past, he was satisfied when the output value reached two or three thousand yuan per mu; now some plots reach as high as 8000 yuan per mu, and his family has moved from its old house into a new three-story home. Standing on the rooftop of the new home and looking at the vineyard covered with grapes, Liao Shiyuan and his wife smiled happily.