Unique tour to discover Trong Duc cocoa garden
In the cacao garden of Trong Duc (Phu Hoa commune, Dinh Quan district, Dong Nai), there are many wooden signs with names of people hanging on the trees. These are tourists who have come here to visit and learn about cocoa and want to "own" a cocoa tree for themselves.
Not far from Da Ba Da area and Suoi Mo tourist area, Trong Duc cocoa garden is not only a stop for tourists to rest on the way to tourist spots in Dong Nai but also brings unique experiences about how planting and tending cocoa trees, processing cocoa products "made in Vietnam".
Tourists visit the cocoa garden
According to the introduction of the opening tour program, cacao Trong Duc Co., Ltd was founded in 2006 by Mr. Dang Tuong Kham, a former military officer. Not only taking advantage of the natural strength to develop the cocoa garden of the company, Mr. Dang Tuong Kham also wants to help poor farmers overcome difficulties with cocoa trees. Currently, the company has become an enterprise supporting farmers in three provinces of Dong Nai, Lam Dong and Binh Thuan in growing cocoa trees for economic development, expanding the material area to 1,000 hectares in 2010, supporting find the output for products as well as introduce specialties of the rich Southern land to tourists.
Cocoa trees prefer sunshine but can be intercropped with densely planted trees, so the green canopy covers the ground, making the garden cool. Currently, there are about 5,000 cocoa trees planted in the garden, from October 2015.
The seedling garden is one of the first points introduced here. The area of nurseries in the company is about 2 ha, which is the place to supply cocoa for farmers in the planting area. Each year, Trong Duc Cocoa Company provides tens of thousands of seedlings for farmers, supporting farmers in their work. Cocoa garden tour experience at Trong Duc Cocoa Co., Ltd will take guests to participate in daily activities of farmers: Fertilizing, pruning, harvesting fruits. Each person will bring small trolleys, picking ripe red or yellow cocoa pods that follow the trunk and bringing them to the workshop. The workshop is located right in the garden area, has a processing area for seeds, seeds drying and processing. Here, visitors can manually recruit the best quality cocoa beans as raw materials for processing chocolates manually.
The unique thing is that many of the trees in this cocoa garden are labeled with the meaning of owning the cocoa. According to the recommendation of Mr. Ngo Thien Thinh, who guides the experience, each person wants to own a cocoa tree that will book with the company. Tourists pay the care manager according to the organic production process and are given a sign of their name at the tree within a year. During that 365 days, the company will update the image, the flowering process and fruit for the visitors to follow. This form is chosen by many international visitors. When the harvest season arrives, the owners of cocoa trees will decide what fruits to harvest and process. Cocoa products are then sent to the tree owner as a result of a year of care.
According to the representative of the company, in recent years, the number of visitors to Trong Duc cocoa garden has increased steadily over the years. The tour experiences cocoa gardens or owners of relatively large cocoa trees, most of them are international visitors. Especially, after working with Ken cacao company in Japan, cacao Trong Duc garden attracts many Japanese visitors, bringing many unique and new experiences for visitors from Phu Tang country.
After a journey to become gardeners, visitors can pick their own fruits to make fresh cocoa smoothies or enjoy natural cocoa-based products such as chocolate, cocoa and alcohol drinks. cacao ... The products that the owner of this land is very caring for, handcrafted, bring a different flavor compared to the traditional chocolate.
Nguyen Huong