Workers: A 92-year-old woman from the Cheremshansky district
Today the heroine of our column “People of Labor” is Halima Gayfutdinova from the village of Birket Klyuch. Despite her venerable age, now she is 93 years old, delighting her children and grandchildren, every year she grows onions.
- When the war started, I was 13 years old. Father and brother were taken to the front, and we, five children, stayed with sick and blind mother”, Halima Ebi says. “Fortunately, we had a cow. In the afternoon I harnessed her to collective farm work, and milked it in the evening. It was she who saved us from starvation.
The woman remembers how she dug up 25 acres of collective farm land with a shovel and sowed with seeds from Szentaly, went with a sickle to the harvest. Halima worked all her life on the collective farm. With a front-line soldier Gumer, she created a family, raised three children.
Today the woman lives alone. Both daughters live with their families in the same village, her son is in Cheremshan.
“The children ask to live with them, but while I am able to do by myself, I will not leave my house,” Halima says. - Our mother lived 105 years, and dad passed away at 95. Sister Salima, who lives in the village, is 95, Camille - 85, Hamile - 81 years old.
The efficient, hardworking Halima is not used to sitting idle. She does not miss any of the five prayers. She also has a goat in the yard, which she milks herself. She even grows potatoes and onions.
- My garden is large, how could I leave it? Weed is overgrown. There is still snow on the garden, and yet there is less time for sowing onions, says Halima. – This year, spring is early, however it is too early to touch the seeds. I sow seeds before planting, as soon as it gets warmer.
And now she is still slender and mobile. And today she picked up a few onion sets and is going to see how the seeds wintered.
“They have dried out a little, but well preserved,” summed up Halima. - Our onions are different from onions in other areas. It is thick, juicy, and the "shirt" is thick. They can be stored for a long time.
According to Halima, cultivating onions is an easy task. She also grows garlic. So last fall, she planted it a lot.