In the village of Rimachi in Volyn, Viktor Kalityuk was one of the first who decided to allocate large areas for growing pumpkins. He started with a few acres, and now has 15 hectares.

Now the man is working abroad, so his 18-year-old son Nazar is harvesting the harvest.

An ordinary tractor "threshes" the pumpkins, to which a special trailer is attached, in which two shafts rotate. Colored juicy koloboks are thrown on them with pitchforks, which were previously cut off from a pumpkin by a tractor with special triangular braids. Further vegetables are ground on these shafts. The pulp falls into one hole on the ground, and on the other side a bag is tied, where clean seeds fly.

“In two hours we can harvest more than a hectare,” says Nazar. – I have five hectares of pumpkin, and my father – ten. Then we dry at home. For this, a special room was equipped: we put a boiler, we heat it with wood and lay out raw seeds on large nets. It takes about 10-12 hours of the appropriate temperature to dry well. ”

But the discarded pulp will rot and will be instead of fertilizer. The field is dominated by medium-sized pumpkins, there are very small ones.

This year we sowed the domestic variety “Ukrainian Polycarpous”, but the harvest is not very good, – the young owner admits. “Usually you can get 700 kilograms of seeds per hectare, and when conditions are bad, then only 200 kilos will be.”

The guy says that they used to take pumpkin seeds to sell them to the market. And now there are telephones of wholesale buyers who come home to pick up useful raw materials. They say that they then resell Ukrainian pumpkins abroad, where they are used for the production of cosmetics and medicines.

“After harvesting, we sell only part of the seeds to pay for the work, to cover the cost of diesel fuel,” explains Nazar. – And we keep most of it for winter-spring. Then the price is the highest. I remember that pumpkins were sold for 88 hryvnia per kilogram for one year ”.

SEEDS