The Sunday market in the town of Kubrat, Razgrad district (Northeast Bulgaria) is no ordinary shopping place. People meet at this market to exchange information and get some news from their relatives abroad. The sellers who manufacture their own produce have regular clients, including many dealers.

Spring is the season when people rush to plant their gardens and sort their vegetable beds. In April the Kubrat marketplace abounds with producers of seedlings. Hasiya Deliibryamova from the town of Slivo Pole, Ruse district, is among them. Hasiya has been growing vegetables for twenty years.

Slivo Pole has long ago become popular as a center of vegetable-growing in this region with the greenhouses which provide the main livelihood of the local population. We found Hasiya Deliibryamova to talk with people who looked happy with the tomato seedlings they bought from her last year and came again to learn more about the vegetable sorts.

I am a vegetable-producer from the town of Slivo Pole. We grow tomato seedling in the early spring. We plant it in our greenhouses and sell some of it on the market. Greenhouse tomato production is our main occupation, but we also plant potatoes. We tour the markets in this region, in order to sell our produce. All family members are engaged in vegetable-growing. Our greenhouses cover an area of 3,000 square meters and we employ seasonal workers to help us, Hasiya went on to say.

This spring came with a lot of cold weather, which was a real challenge for all farmers in Northeast Bulgaria. The early cucumbers died in the frost. There was a period of heavy snow. On top of that there was a power cut and we had to deal with the situation somehow. Here at the market I rely on the trust of my clients a lot, Hasiya further said. Haiya took her son Sinan to the Kubrat market as well.

Initially we didn’t find the courage to join the programmes for EU subsidies, Hasiya went on to say. Now, her family receives subsidies under the Single Payment Scheme. Hasiya’s family has a plum garden which covers an area of 2 hectares. It also grows cabbage and receives additional subsidies under the Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 for cultivation of ancient Bulgarian vegetable and fruit sorts.

The seedling is like a small child. It grows at a certain temperature. You must heat the area when it is too cold and cool the place down when it is hot, Hasiya said at the end of our meeting. As for the market trade, it gets header each year, because sometimes the manufacturers outnumber the clients, Hasiya says.

Farmer Krasimir Chavdarov is also from the town of Slivo Pole. He sells tomato seedlings with his son.

We own 9 greenhouses and produce mainly early tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. Later, we sell our produce mainly on the marketplace in Ruse. I started to grow vegetables nearly twenty years ago. Things are getting more difficult, because the import affects our local produce. My whole family works in the greenhouses. We employ seasonal workers in the summer season only. Everything is expensive in our business- seeds, fertilizers, labor. We heat the greenhouses during the winter, which costs a lot.

We left the market place in Kubrat and took some of the atmosphere of this small Bulgaria town with us with the hope that the farmers will have a very successful and fruitful year.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov