Villages fragrant with fruit scents “Our ancestors adopted a custom of cultivating fruit trees in every household and it has been carried on until now. At present, each farming family grows 10 to 15 fruit trees, or two or three times more than before,” said an official of the Ministry of Agriculture. Lots of farmers across the country, including those of the Sinmi Vegetable Cooperative Farm in Hyongjesan District, Pyongyang, and the Tangsan Vegetable Cooperative Farm in Songnim, North Hwanghae Province, grow various fruit trees at home. They raise apple, pear, persimmon, apricot and jujube trees and grapevines and their per-hectare yields are on the rise. In the Pyongyang Fruit Farm, all the families have fruit trees around their houses and harvested 180 tons of fruits last year. An old man in a village in Jangyon County of South Hwanghae Province said his family has cultivated 10 apple trees, 50 peach trees and five apricot trees, gathering more than 2 tons every year. Farmers of the village were unanimous in saying fruit growing at household is useful in many ways. According to them, the village is filled with the fragrance of fruit tree blossoms in spring, trees are laden with fruits according to seasons to adorn it beautifully and the shade of the trees is an ideal place for cooling off at break in scotching summer. And large fruit harvests help increase their cash income and better their living, they added. It is also splendid to see some rural areas covered with particular kinds of fruit trees. Kumya County in South Hamgyong Province is known as a “peach county” as it produces a great deal of juicy peaches between June and September. Jungnam-ri is the first to yield peach in the county. Fruit trees there are so luxuriant the roofs of houses are covered with their leaves and visitors feel as if they are in a thick forest. Kim Yong Su, an elder of the village, planted ten peach trees in recent years in addition to his original ten trees. According to him, peach growing requires less labour than crop raising in the kitchen garden and therefore anyone can plant and tend trees as many as they wish while doing farming. “Peach growing has surely improved our health. My home is located at the entrance to our village, so people sometimes call on us, attracted by the sweat fragrance of the fruit. And the joy of offering them fresh peaches is indescribable,” said his wife. She added her family gathers more than 600 kilograms of peaches a year. Undong-ri in Hamju County, South Hamgyong Province, is called an “apricot village” as apricot trees line the roads and houses, and villagers attribute the steady increase in macrobians to this. Farming households are also encouraged to plant other good tree species. The Ministry of Agriculture arranges work scrupulously to increase the production of saplings of high-grade fruit tree varieties that suit regional features and are easy to grow in collaboration with the forest sector and scientific research institutes. By Chae Hyang Ok PT