Ready for spring, but the robins are overdue? Lilacs late, your crocuses reluctant?
Don’t despair. If you know where to look, ramps can come to the rescue.
To most Americans, a “ramp” is a reminder of humdrum high-speed highway commutes. But to those tuned to the simpler ways of hill folk, the sprouting of ramps — Allium tricoccum, wild relatives of leeks, garlic and onions — is a rite of spring celebrating a time of reconnecting to the land. The season is celebrated at several ramp festivals held in small Appalachian towns south and east of Pittsburgh.
Right now, in woodlands across Appalachia from New York to Georgia, ramps are thrusting their deep green twin leaves up through last fall’s dead litter.
“It’s the season and ramps are the reason,” says renowned ramp chef Walt Danna of Avella, Washington County. “They talk about that groundhog being a weatherman, but I’ll tell you exactly when it’s spring — when the ramps poke up. And they are.”
Don’t look for ramps in suburban lawns or along the road. Their haunts are off the beaten track in remote ravines, sheltered hollows and high wooded hillsides. Early April to early May is their season, but they’re known to appear in March if the weather is warm (not the case in 2008). When they burst out they’re hard to miss — they’re the first green thing in the spring woods.
If ramps are obscure in mainstream culture, it’s not because they don’t make a statement. Ramps have been prized as food for hundreds of years, but it’s their aroma that people remember.
“They are delicious but, well, they just smell terrible,” said Betty Wiley of Core, W. Va. Despite the stench, she nevertheless looks forward to ramp season every spring. “They’re very seasonal, they are only around for a few weeks in the spring. After that, you can’t find a ramp to save your life. The leaves just die down.”
Ramp redolence is legendary. Stories persist about rural schoolboys who gorged on ramps to evade confinement in school. When the essence of ramp assaulted the stuffy schoolroom atmosphere, teachers dismissed the offenders for several days, freeing them to fish, hunt turkeys or roam at will. That aroma, ramp realists maintain, is somewhat sneaky — less powerful on the breath at first than days later, when it exudes from the indulger’s pores.
Despite their potency, ramps were eagerly awaited by Native Americans and mountain pioneers. Before supermarkets made fresh greens available year round, ramps livened tired winter diets of salted meat and dried beans with the first fresh vegetable matter in months.
The word “ramp” has a seasonal link as sure as the plant’s April emergence.
“The term is generally thought to be from the British Isles, relating to the appearance of the plant during the sign of Aries, the Ram,” said professor Mary Hufford, director of the Folklore Graduate Group at the University of Pennsylvania. Scotch-Irish settlers in the mountains, Hufford said, probably brought the term with them, inspired by a similar leekish herb that grew wild in Scotland and Ireland.
From North Carolina and Tennessee, northeastward along the ridges almost to Pittsburgh, ramp culture reawakens every spring at dinners, festivals and celebrations.
Two of the biggest ramp festivals are held, somewhat confusingly, at unrelated Mason-Dixon historical parks on opposing sides of the celebrated line.
North of the border, ramps will be the featured cuisine April 19-20 at the 18th annual Mason-Dixon Ramp Festival at Mason-Dixon Historical Park near Mt. Morris, Greene County.
A few miles south, a separate ramp festival is held April 19 at Mason-Dixon Historical Park near in Core, W.Va., in Monongalia County, W.Va.
“This is big excitement around here,” said Connie Ammons, who coordinates the Pennsylvania event. “People have cabin fever and they want to get out, then the ramps come up. We had a man here last year who drove 900 miles from Indiana. We’ve had a lot of people come who never tried a ramp. Some are afraid they’re going to have that odor on their breath, but once they taste one, most of them like it.”
Besides the eating, the festival offers a chance to see ramps in their natural state.
“There’s a big patch growing right across Dunkard Creek,” Ammons said. “If the light is right you can see them up there on the hill.”
Ramp soup, ramp wine and ramp burgers will also be on the menu, he said, all consumed to the tune of Native American flute music. There is no charge to attend the festival and various ramp delicacies can be purchased separately.
Washington County’s Danna will be there with proven recipes and recent ramp experiments.
“We go through 15 bushels of ramps at Mason-Dixon,” said Danna, who once won first prize for a ramp dip at another ramp festival in Richwood, W.Va., widely acknowledged in rural circles as “Ramp Capital of the World.” “I pickle ramps, I make ramp jelly, ramp horseradish, ramp shish kabobs, beer-battered ramps and a ramp sampler plate.”
At the Mason-Dixon Historical Park south of the border, they have a different way of celebrating the ramps of spring.
“We’re the Mason-Dixon Park with the big red barn,” said Betty Haas of Core, W.Va. “Ours is a sit-down buffet style dinner. We’ll have ramps, of course, with ham, soup beans, friend potatoes, sauerkraut, homemade noodles and homemade bread. One lady here makes a ramp salad that everyone loves. We bottle the dressing now and sell it. And we’re hoping to have sassafras tea. Folks really like that when we have it.”
Adults pay $9 for the buffet; kids 5 and under are free.
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