Painter by profession, Petru Rusu has embraced the craft of well sinker more than 15 years ago and has managed to clean hundreds of wells. “I’ve worked in the theatre, at the House of Culture, and now, I am helping people to enjoy the clean water. After abundant rains, there’s a lot of silt gathering and then I have a lot of work to do. I like working and it doesn’t matter the place”, he says.

The season of cleaning the wells is usually opened at the beginning of the spring and ends late in the fall. The well sinker says that the new accessories are very useful, as they improve the quality of the carried on works and will allow Mr. Rusu to diversify the work services. “Thanks to the support of ‘Valea Cuboltei’ LAG, I refine my skills. Until now, I was working with my old utensils and I did not have the possibility to buy a video camera and a drill press”, Petru Rusu mentions.

The camera is descended in the well, and thanks to the computer work, the well sinker sees what is happening in this structure, if there’s any strange object. “In the past years, I was managing to clean up to ten wells per season, but this device might increase people’s interest, as I have all the necessary equipment for a high-quality operation”, Mr. Rusu points out.

The project “The Development of the wells’ structure cleaning business through the modernisation of the equipment”, implemented by Petru rusu from Hasnasenii Mari village, Drochia district, was implemented within the USAID LEADER Activity project, co-financed by the United States Agency for International Development – USAID, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland, cooperation programme for development – Polish aid, and implemented by Solidarity Fund PL in Moldova.

In order to ease his job, the farmer managed to mechanize his soil processing work with a Hinomoto N200/20CP mini-tractor. “The majority of the soil processing tasks are manually made, since we don’t have that much workforce in the village. This is why we decided to acquire powerful equipment. We have a manual plough, but we lost a lot of time“, Alexandru tells.

The Dascal family grows various veggie cultures – cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and sweet peppers, – and they are commercialized as wholesale products in Chisinau. “We manage to harvest produce twice a year in order to cover our expenses. And the investment of the mini-tractor will be redeemed in five years“, he mentions.

Alexandru worked a few years in Russia, then came back home and decided to invest in agriculture. “It’s better to be home, even if it’s much harder. I decided to live in the countryside, next to my parents, and the fact that people try to make a change, create LAGs, makes me think that I’ve taken the right decision.”

The project “The Modernisation of the technical-material basis to cultivate vegetables in a protected space”, implemented by Alexandru Dascal from Lazo village, Drochia region, was implemented within the USAID LEADER Activity project, co-financed by the United States Agency for International Development – USAID, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland, cooperation programme for development – Polish aid, and implemented by Solidarity Fund PL in Moldova.