With ramp season nearly here, many West Virginians are preparing to harvest the wild, onion-like crops.
With ramp season nearly here, many West Virginians are preparing to harvest the wild, onion-like crop.
“I like to describe it between an onion and garlic, and it’s super versatile in cooking,” Amy Lovell, Monongahela National Forest educational representative, said. “It’s not something you can get all year long, which I think people really gravitate to as well.”
Guidelines for ramp collecting include only harvesting ramps from patches with more than 100 plants and only collecting around 20 percent of each patch to allow the remaining plants to mature.
When digging bulbs, use a soil fork or hand trowel so as not to disturb the roots of neighboring plants, and make sure to cover any bare soil with leaves to keep invasive plants from growing nearby.
Lovell said the act of harvesting ramps has seen an uptick in popularity in recent years. Ramps can be eaten raw, pickled or fried, or used in dishes like meatloaf and potato soup, among other uses.
“We see children these days going out with their parents and their grandparents to harvest ramps, and it’s really an intergenerational activity that happens in Appalachia,” Lovell said. “And even now, ramps are gaining a lot of popularity, even in large cities. So, in the spring, you’ll start to see them pop up on menus and restaurants in urban areas.”
Places like Monongahela National Forest have restrictions on how many ramps individuals can harvest. The maximum amount is two gallons per person, or 180 plants. Collecting the plants for commercial purposes, including reselling those originally harvested for personal use, is not allowed.
Ramp seeds and transplants, however, can be planted in a personal garden.
“They like really rich, cool moist soil under deciduous trees, so our oak trees or maple trees are birch trees,” Lovell said. “That’s where we typically find grant ramps growing. So if you can mimic those conditions in your home garden, you’re gonna have a really good harvest of ramps.”
Lovell also noted transplants mature more quickly than seeds; transplants take two to three years to mature, while seeds can take up to seven years.
Monongahela National Forest spans ten counties in eastern West Virginia, including Barbour County, Grant County, Tucker County, Randolph County, Greenbrier County, Webster County, Preston County, Nicholas County, Pendleton County, and Pocahontas County. Lovell reminds visitors that when harvesting ramps, make sure to prepare for the weather and any emergencies that could happen.
“This time of year, the weather can be really unpredictable, so we can get snowstorms still, we may get sudden thunderstorms or flash flooding,” Lovell said. “So just make sure that if you’re coming to harvest ramps from the national forest that you’re prepared with appropriate clothing and extra food, extra water, a flashlight and batteries in case you get stranded in the dark.”
Folks digging for ramps in some areas of southern West Virginia will have to find new locations to harvest the wild leek.
According to the National Park Service, the ramp population in National Park and Preserve properties has declined too much in recent years.
Harvesting will no longer be allowed within the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, Gauley River National Recreation Area and Bluestone National Scenic River starting January 1.
Recent surveys show that some populations were “overwhelmingly small” while others were completely gone. Officials said that harvesting in the parks could jeopardize the species.
Ramps are small white bulbs with a green expanded leaf. It is a type of leek that some describe to have an onion or garlic flavor and a pungent smell.
Park biologists are also looking into ways to restore historic ramp populations. The no ramp harvest policy will remain in effect until the plant is found to be more sustainable.
On a bright, sunny day in mid May, my mom pulled up on a gravel road near H.E. White Elementary School in Bomont, West Virginia. A man was waiting, and he stepped up to the driver’s side.
“Are you looking for ramps?” he asked.
“We sure are,” she replied.
Tucked in along Porter Creek in Clay County, West Virginia, about seven miles from Clendenin, Bomont is home to one of my mother’s favorite ramp dinners. She was especially anxious to get to this year’s event because the COVID-19 pandemic meant many ramp dinners were cancelled.
This year’s dinner was still different. It was a drive-through affair because some pandemic restrictions were still in place. Cars lined up on the road leading up to the school, where Principal Jamela Krajescki greeted drivers and took orders. A small tent was set up in the shade, where community members sold sassafras tea by the gallon. You could also pick up freshly dug roots to make tea at home.
Debbie Gould
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Several members of the Bomont community in Clay County, West Virginia go out and dig ramps in preparation for the annual dinner. Sandy Mitchell (middle, in hat and sunglasses) has been digging ramps for decades, since she was an elementary school student. Brud Taylor (seated, in hat) who taught her how to dig ramps passed away last November. Even though there was no community dinner in 2020, the crew got together to take Brud out for one last dig. They harvested enough ramps to hold a small, private meal.
“It’s ladies day out,” said Krajescki, greeting my mom and her friends. “I love it.”
A few minutes later, my mom and her buddies convinced the folks in charge to let them set up at a picnic table. They dug into takeout containers full of ham, beans, potatoes, and ramps, carefully removing cornbread from tin foil wrappings. As they ate, I started thinking about what’s involved in putting on a dinner like this.
How many ramps did it take?
Principal Krajescki told me the dinner at Bomont takes 75 milk crates full of ramps each year. And the entire community is involved in the dinner.
“We have every single person, usually female, usually over the age of 55 or 60 in our gym all week long, sitting at the tables, cleaning those ramps, crate by crate, by crate,” she said.
That’s a lot of ramps.
And there’s been a lot of conversation in recent years as ramps have become popular among food aficionados in larger cities outside of Appalachia. Some experts worry that the plants are being overharvested due to rising demand.
That’s why places where ramps grow, like the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, have guidelines in place to protect against overharvesting.
Amy Lovell, an ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, says ramps can only be harvested for personal use in the forest. And there are limits.
“Personal use is defined as two gallons per person in possession at any one time,” Lovell said.
That’s about what fits in a plastic grocery bag from Wal-Mart or Kroger. Lovell says the other rule of thumb for ramp harvesters is to leave most of the patch unharvested.
“We recommend that you only take about one-fifth or 20% of the plants within a patch,” she said. “And if there are fewer than 100 plants in a patch, we encourage folks to find another place to dig them.”
Although he lives in southeast Ohio and harvests ramps in patches there, chef Matt Rapposelli essentially follows forest service guidelines. Rapposelli is executive chef at the Inn at Cedar Falls in the Hocking Hills area. He’s also the author of the cookbook, A Taste of the Hocking Hills.
“I use about three paper grocery bags full of ramps each year for recipes,” he said.
Rapposelli gets ramps at local farmer’s markets when they are in season, and sometimes he forages for them himself.
Debbie Gould
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Once they are cleaned, ramps are stored in milk crates on the school’s gym floor.
“I just go along and I take a little pair of shears and I just snip and collect them and bring them back,” he said.
Rapposelli doesn’t “dig” ramps — he does not harvest the bulbs — which means taking out the roots too. By leaving those parts of the plant in the ground, he increases the odds that it will produce again next year.
But not everyone is as careful as he is.
“I had a conversation with somebody just a couple of months ago who was going out to harvest
them and didn’t realize that you couldn’t just lay waste to the entire patch and pull the whole things out,” Rapposelli said. “I was like, ‘oh, geez,’ You know, so I had to explain to him, you know, about sustainability and those types of things.”
Stories like this one raise questions about sustainability, but also about who profits from foods like ramps that are foraged from Appalachia and wind up on dinner plates in urban markets.
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About a week before the dinner in Bomont, I’m standing in a wooded ridge in southeast Ohio. Scattered around me are a half dozen or so small patches of ramps. I discovered them a few years ago near my apartment in Athens, Ohio where I attend graduate school.
I’ve been telling Emily Walter about the patches for weeks, and she finally made it out to my place for a ramp tasting. She’s being careful too, cautiously using her car key to cut a single leaf from a healthy plant.
“Mmmm,” she says, chewing away.
Emily is relatively new to the world of ramps. This summer, she’s teaching environmental education workshops for Rural Action, a non-profit based in southeast Ohio. One of the organization’s focus areas is sustainable forestry in Appalachia.
It takes seven years for a ramp plant to produce a flower stock.
“Little dark-purple-y black berries that I think are wind dispersed,” she said. “And then they kind of migrate down the hill.”
Seven years. That’s a long time.
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Which brings us back to the ramp dinner in Bomont and the dozens like it that happen every spring in West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia.
“We live off the ramp dinner all year long,” said Krajescki. The annual ramp dinners are an important fundraiser for the elementary school. This year’s dinner netted $8,500 and that money funds school field trips, among other things..
Laura Harbert Allen
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Ham, corn, potatoes, and ramps are classic combinations found in many ramp dinners across Appalachia. The dinner at Bomont includes sauteed ramps as a separate dish as well as ramps mixed with potatoes.
“Students that have perfect attendance, we use this money to buy them a brand new bicycle at the end of the year,” Krajescki said. And every student in the school gets a Christmas present. “All that comes from the ramp dinner funds as well.”
The dinner at Bomont has gone on for decades. Sandy Mitchell is in her 50s, and she remembers the dinners from her time as a student at the school. And she is part of the team that harvests ramps each year for the annual dinner.
Mitchell said that she takes harvesting ramps seriously.
“We spend two to three weekends before the ramps are really up, scouting them,” she said.
One spot this year was nearly at the top of the mountain. A place where acres and acres of ramps were growing.
“As far as you could see downhill out the hill and back up the hill, nothing but ramps,” Mitchell said. “It was a sea of green.”
The Bomont crew uses shovels to dig and they pack their ramps out in 30 pound feed bags, bulbs and all. But they never decimate a patch. In fact, they pretty much follow the 20% rule. “Where we dig, once we are done, you still can’t really tell we’ve been there,” said Mitchell.
And ecologist Amy Lovell said that ramps are doing just fine in the Monongahela Forest.
“They do seem healthy,” she said. “And I don’t think that we’re at the point where we’re seeing over-harvesting on the forest.”
Lovell thinks the forest’s guidelines are working. That there is growing awareness about how to sustainably harvest ramps. Folks in Bomont say it’s simple logic.
“Common sense,” said Mitchell. “We have to leave a crop to grow and you can’t decimate an area and expect that to grow back. That’s just irresponsible.”
Ramp dinners are back this spring after the pandemic shut down most of them last year. Communities across Appalachia are planning to host the annual celebrations which usually serve as important fundraisers for public libraries, or non-profit organizations.
In West Virginia, the dinners typically begin in April. Ramps are small white bulbs with a green expanded leaf. It’s a type of leek that some describe to have an onion or garlic flavor and a pungent smell.
Many of the dinners will look different because of the ongoing threat of COVID-19. In Upshur County, meals will be available as take out only. The Upshur County Public Library has also changed locations to accommodate traffic. Some other dinners include those in Lewis County in Jane Lew, in Webster County at Upperland and at the self-proclaimed Ramp Capital of the World, Richwood in Nicholas County.
Organizers say visitors should call to confirm the events before making the trip as new threats of the pandemic, or even the weather, could change plans.
It’s spring, which means it’s ramp season across Appalachia. While ramps can be harvested on national forest lands, officials with the Monongahela National Forest are reminding people to use sustainable practices.
Some practices that will help leave ramps for the future include only taking from patches with more than 100 plants, taking only one-fifth of the plants in a patch, and using a soil fork to dig a ramp bulb.
Digging ramps for personal use is permitted in national forests such as the Monongahela, within established limits. Commercial harvesting or any collecting to resell is not allowed. Collecting ramps in national forests for someone else is also not allowed.
Personal use is defined as two gallons per person at any one time, which is about the amount that fits in a typical plastic grocery bag or about 180 whole plants, including roots and leaves.
Ramps are an Appalachian delicacy, but their recent popularity has raised concerns about over-harvesting. Learn how to sustainably harvest ramps from local experts in the first episode of Edible Mountain!
Edible Mountain is a bite-sized, digital series from WVPB that showcases some of Appalachia’s overlooked and underappreciated products of the forest, while highlighting their mostly forgotten uses.
The series features experts, from botanists to conservationists, who provide insight on how to sustainably forage these delicacies. It also explores the preparation of these amazing delectables, something that many could achieve in the home kitchen.
Disclaimer: Folks. We hope that you take caution when entering the forest. Please, always be aware of your surroundings, while treading lightly, so as to not disturb the natural joy and wonder that our wilderness provides.
While most of the flora or fauna described in Edible Mountain has been identified by experts in the field, it is critical to your health and safety that you properly ID any item in the forest before eating it, let alone touching it. If you are uncertain about anything, then please leave it alone and ask for an expert’s advice. Many dangerous plants and fungi share similar properties which make them easily confused with their non-lethal relatives.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting (WVPB) wants you to discover, protect, and enjoy your natural surroundings. We do not want to see you harmed. Please harvest sustainably so that the bounty can be enjoyed by future generations.
The information contained within Edible Mountain is for general information purposes only. WVPB assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in the contents on this Service. WVPB make no guarantees as to the accuracy of the information presented, and any action you take upon the information in this program is strictly at your own risk.
In no event shall WVPB or contributors be liable for any special, direct, indirect, consequential, or incidental damages or any damages whatsoever, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tort, arising out of or in connection with the use of the Service or the contents of the Service. WVPB reserves the right to make additions, deletions, or modification to the contents on the Service at any time without prior notice.
