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Sustainably Harvesting Ramps Also Supports Clay County Community

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.

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.

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..

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.”

COVID-Cautious Ramp Dinners Are Back In West Virginia

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.

Ramps, Dig Responsibly

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.

Edible Mountain – How To Sustainably Harvest Ramps

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.

Have fun and explore.

Monongahela National Forest: Here's How You Hunt Ramps

As spring approaches, ramps are popping up across West Virginia. The Monongahela National Forest on Friday released guidelines for harvesting the wild onion.

Collecting ramps is allowed in the Monongahela National Forest as long as it’s for personal use.

According to a U.S. Forest Service press release, individuals can harvest up to two gallons of ramps per person, or about the amount that fits in a plastic grocery bag.

Harvesting for a business or commercial use is not allowed.

The agency recommends only collecting ramps in patches with more than 100 plants and suggests taking only one-fifth of the plants in large clumps.

This ensures the ramp patches can regenerate. Use small forks or hand trowels when digging ramp bulbs rather than large shovels.

And after digging up a ramp, cover the bare soil with leaves to prevent invasive species from taking root, the release said.

Heads Up Foodies: Appalachian Forests Are Ideal for Growing Shiitake Mushrooms

Appalachian foodies will be interested to hear that the forests in Appalachia could be an ideal environment for growing mushrooms on logs in your own backyard.

The catch? It’s labor intensive, and if you want to sell your mushrooms to the public, you’ll need to show proof that your mushrooms are edible.

Still there are a handful of people in Appalachia who have been growing shiitake mushrooms for decades.

Just outside the town of Milton West Virginia, Bob Maslowski owns a small forest, where he grows and collects wild mushrooms to eat.

His dogs run circles around us as we make our way up a hill under the shaded canopy of maple and oak trees.

“This is kind of a small scale agro forest. I have 140 acres here; it’s all woodland. We like to collect mushrooms. We collect about 21 different edible types of mushrooms here.”

Maslowski and his wife Susan have what is called a forest farm. Aside from mushrooms, they also harvest elderberries, raspberries, and wild onions called ramps from their forest.

“These are ramps. We grow ramps on this same hillside. These are all transplanted.”

This doesn’t look like a traditional farm with rows of crops. This is full of tall shadows from the trees, with birds chirping above our heads. It’s quite idyllic, and not a tractor in sight.

But sometimes you might hear the sound of Maslowski drilling holes into oak logs, on the edge of the forest. He uses the logs to grow shiitake mushrooms.

Maslowski orders shiitake spawn from Wisconsin. The plugs look like these little erasers from a pencil, and inside each one are tiny dormant mushrooms.

Maslowski then sticks these plugs into an oak log from his forest.

“These logs will last about 4,5, 6 years. And they’ll produce several spawns of shiitake each year.”

Then he leaves the shiitake logs on the ground in his forest.

“It’s close to the house so we can check them every day. And it’s on the north slope, in a wooded area. And you don’t want a log in the sun or they’ll dry out too much.”

Maslowski has been growing shiitake mushrooms for about two decades. This is all mostly a hobby for him and his wife. He’s a retired archeologist and she’s a potter. They also have a small business where they sell home brew equipment for craft beer and wine hobbyists. They don’t raise shiitakes for the money.

“Basically, when we have a really good spawn run, we’ll take 9-10 bags to the farmers market. And sell them for about $3 a bag. It’s about three ounces. But when we’re not going to the market, these are plenty to feed us with enough shiitake. We dry some and we freeze a lot.”

Bob and his wife Susan love to cook with shiitake mushrooms. They make Hungarian mushroom soup and shiitake pizza. With each mushroom harvest, they invent new recipes. They share their latest inspirations at dinner parties and potluck gatherings with friends who also grow and cook local shiitakes.

Aside from a few customers at the farmers’ market, and other friends who also grow shiitakes, Maslowski says he doesn’t meet many people here who’ve ever been exposed to specialty mushrooms.

Maslowski used to teach an anthropology of food course at Marshall University- where he talked to his students about mushrooms.

“I had one guy from Kentucky, and this is graduate school, said he’s never had a mushroom before.”

However, there is one wild mushrooms that is popular here.

“Appalachians really love the morels. And they’ll pick them, you know, sometimes you can get a bushel of them in a good place. And they just deep fry them, and in Kentucky it’s called Dry Land Fish. Whereas you go into the expensive restaurants, and these chefs are buying them for $20, $30 $40 a pound. Around here, more and more of the chefs are buying them. But most of them come from California. One of the problems is you’re not allowed to sell wild mushrooms at the farmers’ markets. I’ve seen wild mushrooms for sale at the markets. Nobody really questions them.”

The Health Department doesn’t want people like Maslowski to sell wild mushrooms at farmers markets because there isn’t a way to inspect those mushrooms to make sure they are safe for human consumption. The reason he can sell cultivated shiitake and oyster mushrooms is because they are grown from spores. At the farmers’ market, he has to show proof that he bought the spores– and that his mushrooms didn’t grow wild in the forest.

It can be difficult to sell wild mushrooms to restaurants, too. Under state law, chefs who want to use wild foraged mushrooms have to have a mushroom identification expert inspect every mushroom that is served to the public. But the law doesn’t specify what a wild mushroom expert is. The West Virginia Department of Health suggests that local restaurants should reach out to extension agents, and mycological societies to find experts who can help identify mushrooms in their restaurant.

Another problem for chefs who want to serve wild mushrooms is there just aren’t enough people selling them.

Maslowski collects morels on his own land – along with other wild mushrooms, like chanterelles – but he doesn’t sell those. They’re too precious. He only collects enough for him and his wife to eat.

His hope is to encourage more farmers to start growing shiitakes because he’d like to see the community of mushroom farmers continue to grow in West Virginia.

“What we were hoping by selling shiitake and doing demonstrations at farmers market, that we would get more local farmers into it, and so on. But the local farmers are very conservative.”
By conservative, Maslowski means most farmers he meets aren’t interested in growing exotic, or different crops, like shiitake mushrooms.

But some people want to see more mushrooms farmed from the forest.

Brad Cochran, Extension Agent for Ag and Natural Resources at West Virginia State University Extension Service

Brad Cochran is an extension agent with West Virginia State University.

“There is a lot of demand, especially here in the Charleston, Huntington, Metro area, because there are so many up and coming restaurants and really cool chefs around town that are just dying to get ahold of some good locally grown mushrooms.”

Cochran is working to encourage more farmers to tap into growing shiitake mushrooms, which he says could be perfect for West Virginians who are looking to make a bit of extra cash.

“And if people aren’t considering it already maybe they should be. The growing areas that we have here in West Virginia are perfect. We’re right at about 75% forested, which is a perfect place to grow shiitake mushrooms on logs, is prime territory for mushrooms. ”

Forest farmers are generally folks who grow ramps, hazelnuts, maples syrup, and shiitake mushrooms as a hobby- not as an income. But some people would like to see more forest grown products sold at specialty food stores and at restaurants that serve local ingredients.

Extension agent Brad Cochran believes there’s a lot of potential to grow this industry in Appalachia. Cochran studied forestry in college, and he isn’t against timbering. But he believes that forests can grow lots of products, not only trees.

“So if a landowner is wanting to do a timber harvest, say in 15 years, to help send their kid to college, traditionally they would just wait 15 years for a timber harvest. If they look at mushroom production, in those 15 years, you can have hundreds of thousands of pounds of production that they can sell at the local market for $10-15 a pound. You start looking at that, and you might not even have to do that timber harvest.”

That vision for forest farming is shared by a small group of professors, farmers, and researchers who are scattered across the country. They wonder, if people can make a living off the forest by making maple syrup, couldn’t they do it by growing ginseng, ramps and mushrooms?

Cornell University in New York has a forest on their campus where they are experimenting with forest farming. I attended a forest farming conference there last fall.

Rodney Webb owns Salamander Springs farm in Madison County, North Carolina

Rodney Webb was attending the conference. Webb is a farmer from Madison County, North Carolina. He grows about 1,000 pounds of shiitake mushrooms each year.

“I originally got into growing shiitakes, my wife had cancer, about 17 years ago, Hodgkins Lymphoma, and and we started doing some alternative diet type things. And shiitake mushrooms were one of the things that were recommended for us. And she was supposed to have that twice a week. And we were buying dried shiitakes from Japan. If you’re buying them in small quantities, the price worked out to be, you know, $100 a pound.”

“So I started growing them, and I think they’re very beneficial. They’re high in protein, can get up to 18 percent protein, for shiitakes, so if you’re a non-meat eater they’re a good source of protein. I really want to get them out to people to help make a healthier society.”

Rondey Webb sells shiitake mushrooms at the Jonesborough Farmers Market in Tenn.

At this time, there isn’t a lot of research to support the cancer fighting power of shiitake mushrooms, At least there haven’t yet been enough studies done on humans.

Lino Stanchich is a licensed nutritionist and a macrobiotic health counselor who recommends eating shiitakes for their rich nutrient content. Stanchich was the one who suggested shiitakes to Rodney Webb’s wife 17 years ago. Stanchich was born in Croatia and Italy, and grew up eating wild mushrooms from the forest:

“The best mushrooms are the ones that grow in the forest or on logs, naturally. Another thing too is they have a lot of vitamins. They have a lot of vitamin B 2 B 3 B 6, B 4, zinc, and fibers. So it’s a food, and a medicine at the same time. It’s a very good investment in health.”

Extension agent Brad Cochran says there are more and more studies being done that show the health benefits for eating mushrooms.

“Some of the other things that we are starting to see in the research are that all of them have a lot of cholesterol lowering abilities. While it may not be any kind of percentage that it cuts out cholesterol medication, but it can potentially lower it to where you have a lower dosage. They’re very organically grown, so they’re honestly some of the healthiest things you can eat.”

Cochran says he first fell in love with shiitake mushrooms in forestry school, because they are cool to grow and because they taste delicious.

“You know it’s really really cool, and having the ability to grow them right here in West Virginia is really awesome.”

Cochran says that he’s tried dozens of shiitake recipes, but his favorite is the most basic: he sautés mushrooms in some butter with a little garlic.

He’ll use shiitakes from the grocery store, if he has to. But he says the dish is really the best when the mushrooms come from a local forest, or even his own back yard.

You can buy shiitake spawn to grow on your own logs on websites like Field and Forest. You can also contact a local mushroom expert. In West Virginia, Paul Goland teaches workshops about how to grow shiitake mushrooms: 304-358-2921.

You can buy shiitake mushrooms that are Appalachian grown at:

The Boone Street Market in Jonesborough, Tenn.
The Wild Ramp in Huntington, W. Va.
The Harvest Moon Food Store in Floyd, Va.